Biology 1201A Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Circumstellar Habitable Zone, Ribose, Ribozyme
2 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
All life is composed of cells fundamental unit of all life. Atoms and elements found in living things also found in nonliving forms of matter (e. g. rocks) Both living cells and the abiotic world follow the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. Life is defined by a list of attributes that all forms of life possess. All life displays order, harnesses and utilizes energy, reproduces, responds to stimuli, exhibits homeostasis, grows and develops, and evolves. There are a small number of biological systems that straddle the line between the biotic and abiotic world (e. g. virus-small infectious agents) Virus (no ribosomes - organelle site of protein synthesis) displays many properties of life (reproduce and evolution over time) but are based on its ability to infect other cells. Viruses can"t use their own nucleic acids (dna and rna) to synthesize proteins. They infect the translational machinery/metabolism of other cells to reproduce. Thus, this hijacking nature labels viruses to be nonliving by scientists.
