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The monster itself is just a strand of RNA. The definition of living by most biologists wouldn't include a strand of genetic material. Fire replicates in parti
by mfav 10y ago
The monster itself is just a strand of RNA.
The definition of living by most biologists wouldn't include a strand of genetic material. Fire replicates in particular environments, as do viruses. But we don't typically classify either as living.
I think the point you're getting at is that the distinction between living and non-living is a bit arbitrary and meaningless. I agree.
- adrianN 10y agoFire and viruses have an important difference though, when fire replicates, its children don't inherit anything. A better example would be crystals as their structure influences crystals they seed.
- tambourine_man 10y agoNeither fire nor crystals mutate. That's the thing. A crystals arrangement of its microscopic structure will always be the same, as will the oxidation reaction in fire. A virus undergoes darwinian evolution and will adapt to its environment
- adrianN 10y agoCrystals actually do mutate, the crystallization process is not perfect and introduces defects.
- dekhn 10y agothe operational definition agreed on in mainstream science is that to be living, you have to do regulated metabolism. This definition mainly exists to distinguish viruses from cells; I'm sure there are even cells which don't metabolize, but those are exceptional cases in which the ability to metabolize was lost in a parasitic situation. Spiegelman's monster isn't alive under any common definition of alive, but it has fascinating properties nonetheless and appears to be an attractor in the RNA sequence space, which is quite interesting on its own.