Is a General Theory of Life Possible? Seeking the Nature of Life in the Context of a Single Example
Is a General Theory of Life Possible? Seeking the Nature of Life in the Context of a Single Example
复制标题
普遍的生命理论可能吗？
DOI：
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复制
发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Carol E. Cleland
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Carol E. Cleland
理论在生物学中的作用之一是回答“生命是什么”这个问题吗？在许多其他科学领域的理论也是如此。那么，为什么生物学不应该是这样呢？然而，确定统一的生命概念和原则的努力令人失望，导致一些人（多元主义者）得出结论，生命不是一种自然的生命。在本文中，我认为这样的判断是不成熟的。我们今天所知的地球上的生命是一个单一的例子，而且有积极的证据表明，它可能不代表一般认为的生命。此外，正如我所讨论的，传统上，生命理论的原型是基于多细胞植物和动物。然而，生物学家已经发现，后者代表了一种罕见的、异国情调的、相当新的地球生命形式。到目前为止，我们星球上最古老、最坚韧、最广泛、最多样化的生命形式是单细胞的原核微生物，有理由假设宇宙中的其他地方几乎也是如此。如果说，从我们这个与世隔绝的生命例子中，可以发现一些具有决定性和预测性的、生物学上独特的生命原则，那么它们更有可能在微生物中被发现。我讨论了单细胞微生物与多细胞真核生物不同的一些挑衅性的方式，并认为其中一些可能会为我们提供对生命本质的关键见解。
Is one of the roles of theory in biology answering the question “What is life?” This is true of theory in many other fields of science. So why should not it be the case for biology? Yet efforts to identify unifying concepts and principles of life have been disappointing, leading some (pluralists) to conclude that life is not a natural kind. In this essay I argue that such judgments are premature. Life as we know it on Earth today represents a single example and moreover there is positive evidence that it may be unrepresentative of life considered generally. Furthermore, as I discuss, the prototype for theorizing about life has traditionally been based on multicellular plants and animals. Yet biologists have discovered that the latter represent a rare, exotic, and fairly recent form of Earth life. By far the oldest, toughest, most extensive, and diverse form of life on our planet is unicellular, prokaryotic microbes, and there are reasons to suppose that this is almost certainly true elsewhere in the universe as well. If there are explanatorily and predictively powerful, biologically distinctive principles for life that can be gleaned from our insular example of life it is more likely that they will be found among the microbes. I discuss some provocative ways in which unicellular microbes differ from multicellular eukaryotes and argue that some of them just might provide us with key insights into the nature of life.
DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0800679105
发表时间：
2008-07-22
影响因子：
11.1
作者：
Dagan, Tal;Artzy-Randrup, Yael;Martin, William
通讯作者：
Martin, William