{"title":"Biological matter as a material","authors":"A. Sutton","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780192846839.003.0011","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Although it is usually obvious whether matter is animate or inanimate, it is far from easy to define life. Here we adopt as a definition the three principles identified by Paul Nurse in his recent book ‘What is life?’ There is a resurgence in the physics of life, in particular the materials science of animate matter and the emergence of complexity. This is a departure from molecular biology to a more holistic approach to understanding living matter as a self-organised complex system comprising energy-consuming, purposeful molecular machines, or agents, working collectively. An ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to create animate matter from inanimate matter. First steps have been taken, but there is still a long way to go.","PeriodicalId":246400,"journal":{"name":"Concepts of Materials Science","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Concepts of Materials Science","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192846839.003.0011","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Although it is usually obvious whether matter is animate or inanimate, it is far from easy to define life. Here we adopt as a definition the three principles identified by Paul Nurse in his recent book ‘What is life?’ There is a resurgence in the physics of life, in particular the materials science of animate matter and the emergence of complexity. This is a departure from molecular biology to a more holistic approach to understanding living matter as a self-organised complex system comprising energy-consuming, purposeful molecular machines, or agents, working collectively. An ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to create animate matter from inanimate matter. First steps have been taken, but there is still a long way to go.