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Lecture 8: What is life? - Life as a chemical system
1. Earth life - basic biochemistry
2. Metabolism
3. Catalysis
4. Genetics
Life’s machinery in a cell
A bacterial cell: RNA moleculestranscribe messages from DNAthat are used to produce proteinmolecules inside ribosomes - Fig.5.1 - A. Knoll (2003).
Lipid bilayer vesicles in clay
RNA (red) adsorbed into clay, inside a vesicle (green) - Szostak lab (2004).
Earth life - main attributes:
1)life is chemical in essence; an ordered network of chemical reactions;
2)life is energy dissipating; out-of-equilibrium system;
3)life is compartmentalized;4)life is adaptive, self-optimizing,
fed back, forward; stable to perturbations;
5)life uses molecules that are suited to water.