What is the Meaning & Definition of life


Since always and by sharply abstract condition of the concept there was difficulty in defining what is life. At a time when even even chose to first define what was not life for approaching a definition more certain and specific of what is life.
Life can be understood through various formulations, i.e. those concepts which are not necessarily defined with a single, universal definition. For example, there are some who argue that life is an essential internal condition that categorizes human beings, for others, which is a State intermediate between birth and death. Meanwhile, biology, science that has occupied and deals with living beings, defined as alive to the molecular structure capable of establishing a material support of homeostatic energy transfer when it is stimulated by the environment in favourable conditions (constant and stable).
And to move forward in the understanding of this concept so abstract, very validly can opt for what many have done to understand, define what is not life, but: any structure, even if it contains DNA, unable to achieve that balance that we mentioned before. Therefore, highlights the importance of understanding the phenomenon of life in an environment, that is, in the context of the interaction of the organism we call live with the environment that surrounds it. These processes involve also the contact and interaction, in turn, with other living organisms.
And finally another valid and enlightening resource in the absence of an absolute definition, turns out to be list those things that characterize human beings such as: cellular organization, reproduction, growth, evolution, homeostasis and the movement. In this regard, it should be emphasis in which viruses, cell structure, lacking are "organizations" whose classification as living beings is ceaseless debates in the scientific. On the other hand, does not question the inclusion in our versatile catalog of living organisms of plants, fungi, animals, prostistas, moneras, and bacteria, including calls Archaea.
Biology, as we noted above, is the science that deals with the study of life and in both those who devoted themselves to the study of it, known as biologists, it is must to which thanks to their effort and study, most of the knowledge about this.
The biologists came to the conclusion that life is grouped into different structural levels organized. For example, the union between cells give origin to a tissue and the communion of these gives raison d ' être to an organ such as the heart or stomach that meet specific functions and thus different levels continue to grouping to lead to a population and more widely to a community for example. This stratification of living organisms has resulted in different interpretations that also led to a profound rethinking of the concept of life. Thus, for this form of cataloging in levels of organization in living things, could be considered a single cell of an animal or plant superior as a living organism, since it can survive in conditions in an appropriate way. At the opposite end of the scale, a colony of social insects could be defined itself as a complete living organism, in which each individual behaves similarly to the cells of an animal.
On the other hand, all forms of life known on the planet presented as fundamental constituent element carbon, given the ownership of this substance have 4 paired electrons and, thus, forming molecules with large chains (macromolecules). The second fundamental component is the water, composed of oxygen and hydrogen. If these items is incorporated them to proteins and the sulfur nitrogen and phosphorus of DNA, you can demonstrate that, for basic life, only 6 basic elements are needed. The new debate motivated by Robotics around the "artificial life", refers to electronic devices with a capacity of processing of data, like computers, are based on a different line of elements, of which the dominant is silicon. Interesting to note that Silicon can also form large molecular chains, comparable to the carbon-shaped. Therefore, perhaps the substrate of a future artificial life proceed from this different sequence of atoms, with future and unexpected results.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.