What does life do, then?

[Fred56]

Life at its simplest remove is essentially the storage of energy. This storing (a process) does not come free; Life has to use energy to store energy. This extra comes from the environment. Life is an ongoing balance between using stored energy to find more of it, but there's no free lunch.

[Edtharan]

Life at its simplest remove is essentially the storage of energy.

The question here is: What is meant by "Energy"?

 

Actually I would consider Life at its "simplest remove" as a complex chemical reaction. It doesn't really "Store" energy, except as a regulatory means.

[pioneer]

Life can stored energy. One only has to consider trees and wood. The basic reaction, without an enzymatic analysis, is the movement of hydrogen between reduced states such as C-H and N-H and the oxidized state of hydrogen implicit of water. In water, the hydrogen potential is higher since the highly electronegative oxygen causes the hydrogen to become slightly positive. The result is the need to form hydrogen bonds to lower the potential. In the reduced state, hydrogen's association with the lower electronegative C offers a better environment for electron density. The nitrogen is in the middle offering both some reduction and some oxidation. In other words, NH3 or ammonia will form hydrogen bonds but can also be burned in O2.

 

The C-H burns in O2 but can't technically form hydrogen bonding. The N-H burns in oxygen but can form hydrogen bonds. While the O-H can't burn in oxygen but can only form hydrogen bonds. The cell stores energy when it makes more C-H and N-H but burns energy making O-H. One can also add C-C and C-N as some other ways the cell can store enegy, since these can also burn in oxygen. The final state of the hydrogen, after all this burning is within water, making the hydrogen electrophilic. This also stores energy but sort in an oxidized state instead of a reduced state. This give a little extra umph to the oxygen keeping the cell net burning. It then uses some of this energy to build the molecules of life, which can be burnt in necessary.

[DrDNA]

Life at its simplest remove is essentially the storage of energy. This storing (a process) does not come free; Life has to use energy to store energy. This extra comes from the environment. Life is an ongoing balance between using stored energy to find more of it, but there's no free lunch.

 

With due respect, I disagree.

I believe that life, in its simplest form, compartmentalizes and stores information with a goal of perpetuation of that information.

I view energy simply as a tool that is used by life to achieve that goal.

 

I also believe that this delineates "life" from, for example, fire (in respectful reference to Pioneer's theory about fire being life).

 

Of course I admit that I could be prejudiced at least in part because the information of life as we know it happens to be nucleic acids.

 

Interestingly, I normally would expect your statement to come from a physicist, not a computer science guy.

[foodchain]

With due respect, I disagree.

I believe that life, in its simplest form, compartmentalizes and stores information with a goal of perpetuation of that information.

I view energy simply as a tool that is used by life to achieve that goal.

 

I also believe that this delineates "life" from, for example, fire (in respectful reference to Pioneer's theory about fire being life).

 

Of course I admit that I could be prejudiced at least in part because the information of life as we know it happens to be nucleic acids.

 

Interestingly, I normally would expect your statement to come from a physicist, not a computer science guy.

 

 

I don’t know about the DNA part. Its been shown already to not be the only aspect of inheritance or the core reality of biology and or evolution. I think because of its role in biology many simply think you can study life from a genetics only point of view. I don’t exactly know why life currently uses such or if such is the only possible route for life to sustain itself, being it has many components. I think the reality of the complexity of life might be a reason DNA is used basically as a means to organize itself, in which like the impact of natural selection in general conferred a greater fitness value in time then other means of such if they did exist. It would seem though in life that mutability is a reality and that structures come and go typically based around what can maintain fitness. In short I view genetics as but one part of a whole, and I think its that whole that really needs to be understood in time from the past to real time or the now to understand life currently as we know it.

---------------------------------

As for the OP question, I don’t know what the role of life is. Evolution has various mechanisms, and of course life has various forms. The core rule that seems to apply to it is natural selection. That being said environmental interaction seems to be so finely meshed into an organism its typically highly impossible to separate the environment from the reality of an organism. Which could tie into your question into a great deal simply because life does require rather naturally energy to sustain itself, but that holds true for just about any physical phenomena which only again sits life as a natural thing like star or a planet not much more.

 

I mean in all reality we could find life in the crust of mars that is nothing at all like life on earth, a real alien, but of course it still will have to be able to survive naturally by natural means. I mean with the untold amounts of carbon allotropes to the reality of how many types of amino acids exist to just the basic reality of I guess the universe I don’t think one can put how life on earth is as a absolute for life as nothing more then an assumption really at this point. Being able to relate the molecular reality of life to the environmental is probably going to become the holy grail of biology in my opinion, but a very difficult one as it sort of requires real time analyses. I have often thought about how to go about this in which I think of artificial environments for microbes might be a good start with all kinds of differing environments and or physical realities from any variable such as chemical composition to pressure to how they go about getting energy. The regulation of energy or equilibrium is probably a large part of the spark of life though I would think, being microbes or things like prions or viruses do indeed blur definitions of life.

[Fred56]

Perhaps it:

stores information with a goal of perpetuation of that information.

I wonder how it manages to do this?

[DrDNA]

Perhaps it:

 

I wonder how it manages to do this?

 

Manage to do what?

Store info and perpetuate it (managed by converting energy into building blocks...which you of course know....) or have a goal (which I suspect "life" does not have in its most rudementary forms.....goal = a word that perhaps was used too loosely by me)?

[Fred56]

Life at its simplest remove is essentially the storage of energy. This storing (a process) does not come free; Life has to use energy to store energy. This extra comes from the environment. Life is an ongoing balance between using stored energy to find more of it' date=' but there's no free lunch.

[/quote']

With due respect, I disagree.

I believe that life, in its simplest form, compartmentalizes and stores information with a goal of perpetuation of that information.

I view energy simply as a tool that is used by life to achieve that goal.

Which bit are you disagreeing with?

[DrDNA]

Which bit are you disagreeing with?

 

The energy part: "Life at its simplest remove is essentially the storage of energy."

[Fred56]

Well, I do say ("at its simplest remove"). I'm "modeling" it. It's a thing that stores energy. Sure it does a whole lot more stuff (replication,stimulus-response,trophication,...). This is "an introductory course to Life101".

[DrDNA]

Gotcha. And I understand.

To be honest, my own minimalist points would include viruses, which I actually do not consider to be life. Maybe I should have said compartmentalizes, stores and perpetuates information....excluding anything that must rely completely on something else's metabolism in order to do so.......

[Fred56]

Another important point is that entropy still only goes one way. Life can slow the rate at which entropy increases, but it can't stop it.

 

The viral "organism" seems to fall somewhere outside my generalised conjecture. Viruses don't carry much of an energy store around but rather seem to be a thing that co-opts something that has one (a bacteria or cell) to its own ends. It's a bit of a tough one, that. I think, for the time, that viruses and any other "replicatively" functioning forms (non energy-storing) should be left outside the set. My opine, but.

[DrDNA]

Unless I am missing something, after MUCH thought, I still have a problem with the definition you have presented. Mainly because it seems to include things like flashlights, wet and dry cell batteries, fuel cells, fuel tanks, gas stations, even a water tank located up high on a hill (any object with potential or kinetic energy?....even atoms?)

 

For example, a car which has a battery, gas tank, engine, and alternator fits it quite well.

[foodchain]

Another important point is that entropy still only goes one way. Life can slow the rate at which entropy increases, but it can't stop it.

 

The viral "organism" seems to fall somewhere outside my generalised conjecture. Viruses don't carry much of an energy store around but rather seem to be a thing that co-opts something that has one (a bacteria or cell) to its own ends. It's a bit of a tough one, that. I think, for the time, that viruses and any other "replicatively" functioning forms (non energy-storing) should be left outside the set. My opine, but.

 

 

Yes but no form of life is energy generating in the sense of making its no food supply from nothing. A retrovirus which does not even contain DNA for instance to one that does happen to contain DNA may require something in order to survive but last time I checked that applies to a great deal of life past simply a virus. I think what is being viewed is different means of survival that life currently employs to successful ends via natural selection. The study of life cannot be done is simple pattern or simple deterministic means. The idea that life, as an entity in nature happens to require energy is really a concept that can be applied to I guess the universe as a whole really and anything in it really. The reality of physics and chemistry I think apply fully to life, but looking at the universe for instance those same laws apply to planets yet even in our own solar system there is a great deal of variation to even that. I think it just dwells on a higher scale reality of what natural selection truly represents in maybe its more of a product of natural phenomena executing over time. Speaking of retroviruses such is another example of natural selection and evolution if you want to read up on such.

[Fred56]

For example, a car which has a battery, gas tank, engine, and alternator fits it quite well.

Some things fit my definition only to the extent they have a store of energy. But none of them goes around looking for more of it. Cars don't drive themselves around looking for gas-stations. Looks like it's already time to narrow things down a little though. So life, needs to do something more, to have other functions, than just storing energy in a dynamic way. Hmm...

 

I guess an obvious need would be some sort of information-processing. An organism would need a way to assess, at least periodically, both its own state and that of its environment. Some way of storing previous "assessments" for comparison might be helpful. Of course, all this would require some energy, but it would certainly give an energy-storing thing that needs to find more energy some advantage. The level of processing would depend on the type of organism, (a bacteria vs a cat, say).

[Ophiolite]

Metabolism and mutable inheritance.

http://www.lyricsbase.com/w/westlife/thats-life.html

[Fred56]

Yes, perhaps something that life does is contemplate its own existence. I wonder what the "map of self" of some C. elegans looks like?

 

Ok, time for a summary so far:

Life is a "structure" an organisation of certain elements (mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen) and it is able to extract energy from its environment. In a bootstrap process, life uses energy from the environment and some of the energy it has stored to store more energy.

It does not have to be able to move around, necessarily, to do this (if the environment contains sufficient levels of "food" already). Probably the earliest forms of life on the planet were non-motile. The development of the ability to move around, the first propulsion systems (cilia, flagella, pseudopods -these use stored energy), would have allowed early life to exploit larger areas, or to move somewhere if the conditions changed.

A way to sense the environment is an obvious, probably a necessary, feature that mobile life-forms (still) have. This allows them to react to it, and these first chemical signalling systems were perhaps the beginnings of specialisation, which led eventually to more complex, multicellular life forms, and eventually the arrival of marine and land plants, animals (which have highly differentiated cells), and the mammalian brain.

 

Edit: unless someone can illustrate why this is pseudoscience, can it please be moved to a Bio thread? I know I started it here but surely... should I petition a moderator directly, is that the rule, or whatever?

[DrDNA]

To answer your original question, "What does life do, then?", Fred.....

After much thought, I think I have it......

.....it shits in your face and then you die.

[Fred56]

Well, if you think about it, there's lots of life doing this very thing every moment of our (and every other animal bigger than the end of a pin's) existence. Don't they call it flora, or something?

[Fred56]

One more observation:

Life observes. This is an active, energy requiring, and ongoing process.

 

Information, in the form of photons of EMR, chemicals, and electric potential (in special cases), is collected, or received -in the case of prokaryotes via channels or pores (or simple gaps) in their outer wall, or sheath, that contains their substance (prevents it dissipating) and protects it.

 

Life only samples the constant 'flow' of mass/energy and it then uses the samples to 'remember' or map its environment. In eukaryotes, there is more structure, and more 'sophisticated' transport systems (proteins embedded in cell walls). Also, these more developed cells have learned how to live as a single community, an evolutionary step which led to collections of differentiated cells becoming more dependent on the collective behaviour of all the others.

 

Compartmentalisation into different organs (collections of highly specialised cells), and eventually the adaptation of charge (due to electrons and protons, or ions), and its active separation (across a cell membrane and against a gradient -by specialised proteins or 'ion pumps'), led to a new way of communicating information and collating it.

 

The brain uses regular patterns of synchronistic and synergistic activity to 'measure' and map external (and internal) information, and the (fundamental) control of electrical potential opens the door to this.

 

Observation requires energy. To observe something, a life-form with a brain has to expend energy, but energy from the external world (photons, or sound/pressure waves, or chemicals -touch is a pressure 'wave'), is 'received' by specialised neuronal assemblies, which are adapted to their particular 'energy-receiving' mode.

 

The visual system in humans is arguably our most developed sense (it certainly uses a significant part of the overall brain structure), and this, of course, collects photons. Photons from some external source, say the Sun, can be absorbed by pigment molecules and this triggers an electrical signal (when a certain threshold of pigment molecules has been 'reconfigured' -a stereochemical phenomenon), and a quantum of information (an electrical pulse) gets delivered to the visual cortex. We don't react to individual photons, and their energy is converted into electrical energy (a process which borrows additional energy from the observer's internal store).

 

This internal representation is unbounded in the sense the observer can expend further energy, mapping it to some internal representation (a theory). This is possible because of the storage capacity of an observer, not just of the energy required to actually do any observing, but storage of 'ideas' -memory itself.

[bascule]

Life is a self-perpetuating chemical reaction which improves its ability self-perpetuate over time

 

In computer science terms, life is a busy beaver

[Fred56]

Mmm. Interesting. I have been meaning to ask about (any)one's experience with programming. Particularly with functional or 'logic' languages (Haskell, Meta).

If (any)one has absolutely no idea what a functional (programming) language is, it lets you 'define' something in terms of functionality, instead of data (structures) that are manipulated (processed), functional languages don't use such dated concepts, but instead use 'lists', which are of course, already mapped to lots of useful (Turing and other) algebra. Lisp and Forth are earlier examples...

 

And if (any)one is wondering:

These kinds of languages (functional algebras) seem to be better suited to certain kinds of problems. Which could explain why the AI brigade is so keen on them.

Because a (non-empty) list always has a first element, it is identifiable or selectable of itself, because of this first element, and selection always 'starts' at the first element. Also a list is a stack, which is a Turing machine, or a Markov chain or process. Lists seem to fit more easily with what life does (except when you just want to crunch numbers, in which case data structures are probably a better idea), and are inherently symbolic.

[bascule]

Mmm. Interesting. I have been meaning to ask about (any)one's experience with programming. Particularly with functional or 'logic' languages (Haskell, Meta).

 

I use Erlang. Ask Aeternus about Haskell.

 

If (any)one has absolutely no idea what a functional (programming) language is, it lets you 'define' something in terms of functionality, instead of data (structures) that are manipulated (processed), functional languages don't use such dated concepts, but instead use 'lists'

 

Lisp is actually among the oldest languages...

 

which are of course, already mapped to lots of useful (Turing and other) algebra.

 

Lisp (and most functional languages) map to Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. While Turing provided the conceptual framework for practical computation, it was Church who provided the theoretical basis for functional languages.

[foodchain]

One more observation:

Life observes. This is an active, energy requiring, and ongoing process.

 

Information, in the form of photons of EMR, chemicals, and electric potential (in special cases), is collected, or received -in the case of prokaryotes via channels or pores (or simple gaps) in their outer wall, or sheath, that contains their substance (prevents it dissipating) and protects it.

 

Life only samples the constant 'flow' of mass/energy and it then uses the samples to 'remember' or map its environment. In eukaryotes, there is more structure, and more 'sophisticated' transport systems (proteins embedded in cell walls). Also, these more developed cells have learned how to live as a single community, an evolutionary step which led to collections of differentiated cells becoming more dependent on the collective behaviour of all the others.

 

Compartmentalisation into different organs (collections of highly specialised cells), and eventually the adaptation of charge (due to electrons and protons, or ions), and its active separation (across a cell membrane and against a gradient -by specialised proteins or 'ion pumps'), led to a new way of communicating information and collating it.

 

The brain uses regular patterns of synchronistic and synergistic activity to 'measure' and map external (and internal) information, and the (fundamental) control of electrical potential opens the door to this.

 

Observation requires energy. To observe something, a life-form with a brain has to expend energy, but energy from the external world (photons, or sound/pressure waves, or chemicals -touch is a pressure 'wave'), is 'received' by specialised neuronal assemblies, which are adapted to their particular 'energy-receiving' mode.

 

The visual system in humans is arguably our most developed sense (it certainly uses a significant part of the overall brain structure), and this, of course, collects photons. Photons from some external source, say the Sun, can be absorbed by pigment molecules and this triggers an electrical signal (when a certain threshold of pigment molecules has been 'reconfigured' -a stereochemical phenomenon), and a quantum of information (an electrical pulse) gets delivered to the visual cortex. We don't react to individual photons, and their energy is converted into electrical energy (a process which borrows additional energy from the observer's internal store).

 

This internal representation is unbounded in the sense the observer can expend further energy, mapping it to some internal representation (a theory). This is possible because of the storage capacity of an observer, not just of the energy required to actually do any observing, but storage of 'ideas' -memory itself.

 

That is very interesting. Has much thought been poured into the idea of how this works, on a cellular/molecular basis to the rest of an organism, or group of such? I think such implications could prove very valuable in ecology if such were possible realities of nature.

[Fred56]

Hmm. This all represents my thinking, if that's what you mean. It's based entirely on my own observations (and learning -Biochemistry, Physics, etc).

I don't know that any of it isn't something that plenty of other people have thought about as well (I must have got it from somewhere).

The study of information exchange at the cellular level is an ongoing process, and there are already lots of fairly well-understood enzymatic and biochemical pathways. But we don't have anything near a "complete" picture of what's happening. Also we tend to concentrate on the neural aspects of information processing (but obviously there's a lot more going on).

 

...later on:

 

All life observes its environment. It is obliged to do this. It requires a store of energy, and has learned how to meet this requirement in gradual steps, that have yielded an ability to aggregate and communicate better with other lifeforms, and eventually develop, via this more efficient storage, "better communicating" lifeforms (with each other, and with the environment).

 

We are a result of this long chain of development, of adaptation (change), and an apparent purpose. We have observed a lot of things about the world and, one of the things we know is just how improbable our own existence (as a species), actually is: how we are at the end of a very twisted and pruned twig of a very much larger tree. How many times our own planet has come close to sweeping us (or our predecessors) off the stage altogether, and how we are just one surviving member of a family of (immediate) predecessor species, the last man standing, as it were, in our particular spot(light).

 

All this has not been an easy journey. There has been, and of course, continues to be, a necessary expenditure, by us and all the other contending lifeforms (species) for a place on the stage, and we (and all the others) have changed the world (as well as ourselves), all lifeforms therefore are obliged to change their environment.

 

But we are now at a point where we seem to be trying to change the environment too quickly, or we are expending too much energy, in doing so, and there seems to be a new threat emerging from the 'stage wings' that has not been seen for a long time: since the last time there was a global change incurred as a cost, or result, of a species changing its environment. For the first time in our history as a species our own activity is looking set to change the world's climate, and change the environment to our disadvantage, and that of many other species who need land to live on, or fresh water. The planet looks like it is going to become a dangerous place (for us, anyway), for a while.

 

Change is inevitable. The universe is changing constantly, as all life is too, and there is a compulsion, but also a striving, to this change. It is a contention, a constant ongoing and energy-using task, that we and the environment, as part of the changing universe, have to do. We cannot (despite many centuries of pondering the possibility) step outside of this "frame of reference" --there is no outside to step to, we cannot observe (change) without changing ourselves, and expending energy. We have to observe our surroundings constantly (even though we "imagine" ourselves to be unaware of it for a part of each day).

 

The environment and the universe, external to our internal "observer" status, our internal map of the world and the immediate things in it, including our own location, also is a universe of things that communicate, and in some sense, also adapt (they certainly change). We imagine ourselves sometimes to be somehow able to exist between the two (the external and internal worlds), that we are somehow disconnected from both, free to float somehow beyond the perturbing influence of the senses, or the mind itself. But we are clearly reliant, connected firmly to both, and as examples of life, actually connected to that living, that existence which is necessarily based not on, but in, a compartmentalisation, a package (actually a collection of other sub-collections of quite specialised packages, or cells).

 

Something that this basis, this collection or package, that we don't reside within, but are (we are the package, as it were), is promising to deliver (eventually), because of our developed ability to observe, and learn from, the world, is looking extremely promising, probably it will represent a new kind of resource that we can harness. What it might bring us is a bit of a guess at the moment, but it has already, thanks to recent developments in our ability to manipulate matter at very small scales, delivered some fairly amazing stuff (and lots of useful new mathematics).

 

We seem to be between two things after all, but they are real things, and represent real choices and work we are bound to perform. We have already assured that the next century will be somewhat unpleasant for many of us, and for probably many other animals, but we are at some kind of threshold here, I believe, and we have to start thinking harder about what it all means, and what we are (supposed to be) doing here.