1. What is life
What is Life?
Jung Youngkwang
Abstract
I will suggest the definition of life through the feature of biological phenomena which consist of cell, are metabolism, response stimulation, development and growth, inheritance and reproduction, evolution and adaption
Introduction
In the bioinformatics class, the professor suggested his own definition of life. Life is a set of switch. Each switch makes signals and sum of signal is data. The component of life is energy, time, information. In his point of view, he said that both artificial intelligence(AI) and virus are life. AI has electrical energy and information and can think what to do in the future. Virus has genetic information and process evolution as time pass and can earn chemical energy from host cell.
The features of biological phenomena
Consist of cell
Cell is minimum structural unit of organism. There is a system by subcellular component(organelle) in the cell. Only one cell such as prokaryote can make protein for survival and energy and transfer its information to next generation. Therefore, life need to exist form of cell as structural unit to maintain one complete system
Metabolism
For operating machine, we need to have fuel to make energy. It is similar to human case. To move or do something, human need to have food to make energy as form of ATP. Not only human, but also every organism need energy for operating its biological system. Metabolism is process or pathway to make energy by chemical reaction. Therefore metabolism is important factor for life to maintain the system.
Response stimulation
It is related to signaling. Life should know what happen in the surrounded environment. When there are some energy sources(food) surrounding the organism, it need to know where the food is to eat them and make energy . When pathogen such as virus or bacteria infect the organism, it should know what happens to defense and cope with it. In the multicellular organism, each cell need to know what happens surrounding themselves to cell communication through receptor and signaling molecule. There organism need to have ability to know what happens around and cope with by response about external stimulation.
development and growth
Life need the process of development to make the start point of cellular system as a form of unicell or multiple cell, and also need the process of growth to maintain or make the ideal system. In other words, these processes mean a process from making start point to final result for survival of given environment.
Inheritance and reproduction and evolution and adaption aren`t essential factor for single organism. But because each existence of organism disappear as time, they are important factor for life to exist the information which the organism has as time pass permanently.
Inheritance and reproduction
What is the essential meaning of life? Life is a set of genetic information. Life makes the cellular system to protect previous information and add new information to it from the environment. To transfer the information to next generation, the process of the inheritance and reproduction are essential.
Evolution and adaption
Evolution and adaption are a process which make better systems for the environment. To create better system, it should include the process to correct genetic information. In other words, evolution and adaption are a process of correction genetic information.
Conclusion
I defined what the life is from the feature of biological phenomena. I extracted the main factors of life from the properties.
First, life needs complete system which is a place to survive and conserve and transfer its information.
Second, life needs energy which move around or execute biological process by chemical reaction
Third, life needs signaling pathway which know what happens
Forth, life needs information which is transfer to next generation as time pass
Therefore, I think that life is a set of system, energy, signaling pathway, and information.
