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Life, its definition, origin, evolution, and four-dimensional hierarchical structure.

George E Mikhailovsky1

  • 1Global Mind Share, Norfolk, VA, USA.

Bio Systems
|February 21, 2024
PubMed
Summary

Life

Area of Science:

  • Origin of Life studies
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Systems Biology

Background:

  • Biological systems possess unique features.
  • Ervin Bauer's ideas provide a foundation for defining life.
  • Understanding life's attributes is crucial for origin of life research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Formulate necessary and sufficient attributes of life.
  • Analyze attribute occurrence during life's origin.
  • Explore biological evolution as complexification.

Main Methods:

  • Review of biological system features.
  • Analysis of attribute occurrence scenarios.
  • Introduction of post-dissipative structures and ratcheting processes.
Keywords:
Biologicals evolutionBiostructuresDefinition of lifeMesosystemsMulti-hierarchical structure of biosystemsOrigin of lifeSustainable non-equilibriumTemporal structures

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Main Results:

  • Four necessary and sufficient attributes of life defined.
  • Scenarios for the origin of life presented with pros and cons.
  • Structuredness defined as a measure of complexity.
  • Distinction between micro- and macro-life proposed.
  • Three laws of biochemodynamics formulated.

Conclusions:

  • Living organisms are chemodynamic systems.
  • Hierarchicality identified as a key attribute of macrolife.
  • Fifteen basic features of living beings summarized.