It is becoming more and more established that human cells are not really alive. They just are a cooperative of things that are alive. Mitochondria, for instance

It is becoming more and more established that human cells are not really alive. They just are a cooperative of things that are alive. Mitochondria, for instance, are alive. Our cells cannot survive without mitochondria, yet mitochondria can live an thrive without human cells. In a way eukaryot cells are like companies, as opposed to individuals : they're a collection of cooperative agreements between various parties. If you're pedantic eukaryot cells are fictional, like companies : there are no cells/companies, there are only cooperating smaller components that (in theory) could decide to dissolve at any time. But when walking around in the world you could easily be forgiven for thinking they do exist, as they are present, you can interact with them, they often look like they have coherent reactions (even though they don't), there's a wall around them, ... The article specifies how they deal with mitochondrial damage : the same way a company would deal with a "defective" employee : have security escort them out of the building. Well a cell does what I often think companies would like to do : kill them first, then escort them out of the building, then find a new one (usually by asking an existing one to reproduce, but it seems there are other ways). It's even more similar than you'd think. A eukaryot cell doesn't kill the mitochondria "itself", it asks the golgi apparatus to do it for it (form a lysosome around it). This research is groundbreaking because it shows our cells behave like companies do in another way : every now and again, they try to replace even perfectly functional employees with better ones.