How wonderful is the living world! The wide range of living types is amazing. The extraordinary habitats in which we find living organisms, be it cold mountains, deciduous forests, oceans, freshwater lakes, deserts, or hot springs, leave us speechless. The beauty of a galloping horse, of the migrating birds, the valley of flowers, or the attacking shark evokes awe and a deep sense of wonder. The ecological conflict and cooperation among members of a population and among populations of a community or even the molecular traffic inside a cell make us deeply reflect on – what indeed is life? This question has two implicit questions within it. The first is a technical one and seeks the answer to what living is as opposed to the non-living, and the second is a philosophical one and seeks the answer to what the purpose of life is. As scientists, we shall not attempt to answer the second question. We will try to reflect on – what is living?
1.1 WHAT IS ‘LIVING’?
When we try to define ‘living’, we conventionally look for distinctive characteristics exhibited by living organisms. Growth, reproduction, ability to sense environment and mount a suitable response come to our mind immediately as unique features of living organisms. One can add a few more features like metabolism, ability to self-replicate, self-organize, interact, and emergence to this list. Let us try to understand each of these.
All living organisms grow. An increase in mass and an increase in the number of individuals are twin characteristics of growth. A multicellular organism grows by cell division. In plants, this growth by cell division occurs continuously throughout their life span. In animals, this growth is seen only up to a certain age. However, cell division occurs in certain tissues to replace lost cells. Unicellular organisms grow by cell division. One can easily observe this in vitro cultures by simply counting the number of cells under the microscope. In the majority of higher animals and plants, growth and reproduction are mutually exclusive events. One must remember that increase in body mass is considered growth. Non-living objects also grow if we take an increase in body mass as a criterion for growth. Mountains, boulders, and sand mounds do grow. However, this kind of growth exhibited by non-living objects is by the accumulation of material on the surface. In living organisms, growth is from the inside. Growth, therefore, cannot be taken as a defining property of living organisms. Conditions under which it can be observed in all living organisms have to be explained and then we understand that it is a characteristic of living systems. A dead organism does not grow.
Reproduction, likewise, is a characteristic of living organisms.
In multicellular organisms, reproduction refers to the production of progeny possessing features more or less similar to those of parents. Invariably and implicitly we refer to sexual reproduction. Organisms reproduce by asexual means also. Fungi multiply and spread easily due to the millions of asexual spores they produce. In lower organisms like yeast and hydra, we observe budding. In Planaria (flatworms), we observe true regeneration, i.e., a fragmented organism regenerates the lost part of its body and becomes a new organism. The fungi, the filamentous algae, the protonema of mosses, all easily multiply by fragmentation. When it comes to unicellular organisms like bacteria, unicellular algae, or Amoeba, reproduction is synonymous with growth, i.e., an increase in the number of cells. We have already defined growth as equivalent to increases in cell number or mass. Hence, we notice that in single-celled organisms, we are not very clear about the usage of these two terms – growth and reproduction. Further, there are many organisms that do not reproduce (mules, sterile worker bees, infertile human couples, etc). Hence, reproduction also cannot be an all-inclusive defining characteristic of living organisms. Of course, no non-living object is capable of reproducing or replicating by itself.
Another characteristic of life is metabolism.
All living organisms are made of chemicals. These chemicals, small and big, belonging to various classes, sizes, functions, etc., are constantly being made and changed into some other biomolecules. These conversions are chemical reactions or metabolic reactions. There are thousands of metabolic reactions occurring simultaneously inside all living organisms, be unicellular or multicellular. All plants, animals, fungi, and microbes exhibit metabolism. The sum total of all the chemical reactions occurring in our body is metabolism.No non-living object exhibits metabolism. Metabolic reactions can be demonstrated outside the body in cell-free systems. An isolated metabolic reaction(s)outside the body of an organism, performed in a test tube is neither living nor non-living. Hence, while metabolism is a defining feature of all living organisms without exception, isolated metabolic reactions in vitro are not living things but surely living reactions.
Hence, cellular organisation of the body is the defining feature of life forms.
Perhaps, the most obvious and technically complicated feature of all living organisms is this ability to sense their surroundings or environment and respond to these environmental stimuli which could be physical, chemical, or biological. We sense our environment through our sense organs. Plants respond to external factors like light, water, temperature, other organisms, pollutants, etc. All organisms, from the prokaryotes to the most complex eukaryotes can sense and respond to environmental cues. Photoperiod affects reproduction in seasonal breeders, both plants and animals. All organisms handle chemicals entering their bodies. All organisms, therefore, are ‘aware’ of their surroundings. The human being is the only organism who is aware of himself, i.e., has self-consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, becomes the defining property of living organisms.
When it comes to human beings, it is all the more difficult to define the living state. We observe patients lying in a coma in hospitals virtually supported by machines that replace the heart and lungs. The patient is otherwise brain-dead. The patient has no self-consciousness. Are such patients who never come back to normal life, living or non-living?
In higher classes, you will come to know that all living phenomena are due to underlying interactions. Properties of tissues are not present in the constituent cells but arise as a result of interactions among the constituent cells. Similarly, properties of cellular organelles are not present in the molecular constituents of the organelle but arise as a result of interactions among the molecular components comprising the organelle. These interactions result in emergent properties at a higher level of organisation. This phenomenon is true in the hierarchy of organisational complexity at all levels. Therefore, we can say that living organisms are self-replicating, evolving, and self-regulating interactive systems capable of responding to external stimuli. Biology is the story of life on earth. Biology is the story of the evolution of living organisms on earth. All living organisms – present, past, and future, are linked to one another by the sharing of the common genetic material, but to varying degrees.