| dc.contributor.author | Gómez Márquez, Jaime José |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2021-07-29T10:37:18Z |
| dc.date.available | 2021-07-29T10:37:18Z |
| dc.date.issued | 2021 |
| dc.identifier.citation | Gómez-Márquez, J. What is life?. Mol Biol Rep (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-021-06594-5 |
| dc.identifier.issn | 0301-4851 |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10347/26640 |
| dc.description.abstract | Background: Many traditional biological concepts continue to be debated by biologists, scientists and philosophers of science. The specific objective of this brief reflection is to offer an alternative vision to the definition of life taking as a starting point the traits common to all living beings.
Results and Conclusions: Thus, I define life as a process that takes place in highly organized organic structures and is characterized by being preprogrammed, interactive, adaptative and evolutionary. If life is the process, living beings are the system in which this process takes place. I also wonder whether viruses can be considered living things or not. Taking as a starting point my definition of life and, of course, on what others have thought about it, I am in favor of considering viruses as living beings. I base this conclusion on the fact that viruses satisfy all the vital characteristics common to all living things and on the role they have played in the evolution of species. Finally, I argue that if there were life elsewhere in the universe, it would be very similar to what we know on this planet because the laws of physics and the composition of matter are universal and because of the principle of the inexorability of life |
| dc.language.iso | eng |
| dc.publisher | Springer |
| dc.rights | © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| dc.rights | Atribución 4.0 Internacional |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| dc.subject | Life definition |
| dc.subject | Living viruses |
| dc.subject | Robots |
| dc.subject | Extraterrestrial life |
| dc.title | What is life? |
| dc.type | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
| dc.identifier.DOI | 10.1007/s11033-021-06594-5 |
| dc.relation.publisherversion | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-021-06594-5 |
| dc.type.version | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
| dc.identifier.e-issn | 1573-4978 |
| dc.rights.accessrights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| dc.contributor.affiliation | Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Departamento de Bioquímica e Bioloxía Molecular |
| dc.description.peerreviewed | SI |
