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Has anything ever lived that didn't have...?


Hat

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23 minutes ago, ynot said:

 

It would be like having a tree without any wood.

Like bamboo?  A grasses attempt at "treeness".

 

Brent Ashcraft

ashcraft, brent allen

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7 minutes ago, doushantuo said:

one more go:

Mitchell,on: himself:P

Longest fairly recent piece i could come up with 

mit oxidatphotosyntheticphosphorylation hell - 1966.pdf

On the occasion of the hemicentenary(is that even a word?) of the formulation of his theory

I'm reading The Vital Question by Nick Lane. That's what got me started on this.  

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38 minutes ago, Hat said:

Right, you cannot have life without a metabolism, but I said "anything with a metabolism", not life should be defined as "a metabolism". If you can't have life without a metabolism, and you can't have a metabolism without life, than why not define life as "anything with a metabolism "?

You are changing words.

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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23 hours ago, ynot said:

Even bambo has a wood structure.

So does okra, but it is not a tree.

 

Tree is not a related grouping.  Fern trees, pine trees, and oak trees are not particularly closely related.  Trees are a good metaphor for if something is alive though, you will recognize it when you see it.............maybe.

 

Wondering if my school's phone tree has its own metabolism.

Brent Ashcraft

ashcraft, brent allen

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3 hours ago, ashcraft said:

Tree is not a related grouping.  Fern trees, pine trees, and oak trees are not particularly closely related.  Trees are a good metaphor for if something is alive though,

I never said they were related, but they all have a wood structure as do bushes.

Darwin said: " Man sprang from monkeys."

Will Rogers said: " Some of them didn't spring far enough."

 

My Fossil collection - My Mineral collection

My favorite thread on TFF.

 

 

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I think I may be a little vague on my point.  Metabolism, cells, trees are all terms that are vague.  We look at organisms that are alive now on the Earth and we use these as part of our definition.  To be a living cell you must have metabolism.  To have metabolism, you must be a living cell.  Ergo the tree.  To be a tree, you must have woody structure.  Yet, many plants have woody structure and are not trees.  Well you have to be tall.  I am tall. (2 feet and 53 inches), yet I am not a tree.  Well, you have to be a plant.  Well, grapes are plants, are tall with woody structure.  But not really trees.

 

Can you have metabolism without having a cell?  It all depends on how you define metabolism and cell.  They are base definitions for the argument.

 

Brent Ashcraft

ashcraft, brent allen

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Your original question:

 

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 9:20 AM, Hat said:

Has anything ever lived that didn't have a metabolism? Is there anything that is non-living that does have one?

 

The definition we're working with (from Wikipedia):

 

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 10:06 AM, aerogrower said:

"Metabolism (from Greek: μεταβολή metabolē, "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations within the cells of living organisms."

 

To answer your current question here:

 

On ‎4‎/‎13‎/‎2017 at 10:18 PM, Hat said:

Right, you cannot have life without a metabolism, but I said "anything with a metabolism", not life should be defined as "a metabolism". If you can't have life without a metabolism, and you can't have a metabolism without life, than why not define life as "anything with a metabolism "?

 

The reason why we don't define it that way is that it's a circular definition. Metabolism is defined by it's relationship to life; defining life by the presence of a metabolism becomes a tautology, and tells us exactly nothing. Better to keep life defined by other qualities.

 

Basically, your original questions can be answered simply "No, by definition." Of course, biology is messy, and it seems that most boundaries have edge cases (such as viruses, in this question) that make people think.

 

The question of how to define life is a fascinating topic!

 

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On ‎4‎/‎15‎/‎2017 at 3:28 PM, ashcraft said:

Can you have metabolism without having a cell?  It all depends on how you define metabolism and cell.  They are base definitions for the argument.

 

The Wiki definition of cell:

 

"The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism, typically microscopic and consisting of cytoplasm and a nucleus enclosed in a membrane. Microscopic organisms typically consist of a single cell, which is either eukaryotic or prokaryotic."

 

This definition doesn't reference metabolism. So, since metabolism is defined as being within the cells of living organisms, no, you can't have metabolism without a cell.

 

You also can't have a living cell without a metabolism, since that is, by definition, the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations.

 

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5 hours ago, Mediospirifer said:

 

The Wiki definition of cell:

 

"The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism, typically microscopic and consisting of cytoplasm and a nucleus enclosed in a membrane. 

 

 

But wiki  can be wrong.  Prokayotes outnumber eukaryotes, so the typical cell does not have a membrane enclosed nucleus.

 

It all depends on whose definition you use.

 

Brent Ashcraft

ashcraft, brent allen

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7 hours ago, Mediospirifer said:

 

The Wiki definition of cell:

 

"The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism, typically microscopic and consisting of cytoplasm and a nucleus enclosed in a membrane. Microscopic organisms typically consist of a single cell, which is either eukaryotic or prokaryotic."

 

This definition doesn't reference metabolism. So, since metabolism is defined as being within the cells of living organisms, no, you can't have metabolism without a cell.

 

You also can't have a living cell without a metabolism, since that is, by definition, the set of life-sustaining chemical transformations.

 

According to the cambridge article I posted earlier in the thread you CAN have metabolism without a cell, but that is only a hypothesis, and the article centers around the idea that metabolisms could have arisen before "life" so by the way that these researchers are defining it, metabolism does not equate to life.

 

Scott

 

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