‘Life is Strange’ is Part two of our ‘Life’ Blog Series.
In my last post, ‘What is Life?’, the first post in this series on ‘Life‘, I referenced a very interesting book by Addy Pross: “What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology”.
The first chapter of Pross’s book is entitled “Living Things are so Very Strange”. In his first chapter, Pross tells us that living and non-living things are very different. He discusses how the remarkable advances in molecular biology over the past six decades has revealed the amazing complexity and diversity of nature’s design capabilities.
Life is strange, and very diverse
He explains that these design capabilities and diversity of nature are evident at the visible macroscopic level, with literally millions of species inhabiting the Earth’s biosphere. But he points out that microbiologists are discovering that life’s design capabilities and diversity are even more numerous and extreme in the invisible world of microscopic life. Pross gives the example of the bacterial kingdom within the microscopic world being a source of ‘overwhelming, almost incomprehensible diversity, one that is just beginning to come to light’.
But life’s design and diversity, Pross tells us, are just two of the characteristics of Life which makes life special. He identifies six characteristics of Life:
- organized complexity
- purposeful character
- dynamic character
- diversity
- far-from-equilibrium state
- chiral nature.
For a better understanding of these characteristics, I recommend that you refer directly to Pross’ book (see reference above). I will only briefly outline each one in this post.
In the second part of this post we will consider Life’s organized complexity:
Organized Complexity
Life on Earth is characterized by the highly organized nature of living things.
Highly specific
This living world complexity is not arbitrary, but highly specific. The chemistry of life is organized into systems that each have a specific purpose. Every system is necessary and no system exists without a purpose.
DNA
In the case of cell genetics, the system of RNA and DNA molecules code the purpose and actions of each cell, including its growth, replication, and death.
This system is very specific as even a singly change in a human’s DNA sequence, one of 3 billion units, may potentially lead to thousands of genetic diseases.
Small changes to life’s complex structure may undermine the viability of that living system.
Bacteria
This organized complexity extends to bacterial cells. A bacteria is a single cell that is a self contained nano-factory consisting of a highly complex but integrated network of chemical reactions.
Living cells are nanofactories
Living cells are nano-factories containing components which are of molecular size.
Each cell nano-factory involves a highly complex but integrated network of chemical reactions which extract energy from the environment, stores it in different chemical forms for subsequent use. The stored energy is used to power the biosynthesis of essential cellular building blocks, the control and regulation of the cellular machinery to ensure proper function, and other important functions within the cell.
Cells use chemistry and physics
The cell performs not only chemical reactions but also nano scale physical processes such as pumps, rotors, motors, propellers, scissors, all to ensure that cellular functions are carried out in a timely manner, as required by the cell’s purpose.
How is the organized complexity of the cell maintained?
Everything in the Universe, whether physical or living, must obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics and are subject to increasing Entropy (or increasing chaos). However, the chemistry of life, biology, uses energy to create order, in direct opposition to the Second law of Thermodynamics or Entropy.
The physical universe prefers chaos to order, so disorder is the natural order of things. Life also obeys the Second Law but is able to use chemistry to create order from chaos but at an energy cost. Consequently the environment within which the ordered life exists still tends to disorder.
Homeostasis
Within living systems, the highly organized state that is necessary for biological function is maintained with remarkable precision. This maintenance of a stable equilibrium through physiological processes is called homeostasis.
Darwinian Theory, and the origin of life
Darwinian Theory is a biological theory and deals with biological systems, whereas the origin of life problem is a chemical problem. Chemical problems are best solved with chemical (and physical) theories.
Life’s organized complexity is very strange
“Life’s organized complexity is strange, very strange, and how it came about is even stranger“. Addy Pross makes this statement in his book, “What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology“.
We shall continue to discuss Pross’s view of how life came about in subsequent episodes of this “What is Life?” series of posts on the Seaswell Publishing Blog.
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(Post created: 29/01/2025)