Biological matter as a material

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.