Publisher's Synopsis
It is crucial to take action based on a clear definition of life when looking for extraterrestrial life. According to the definition of life in the 20th century, cells that are capable of self-replication, metabolism, and mutation are those that allow genetic information to alter and allow for evolution. Current definitions of life are based on twentieth-century statistical mechanics, physics, and chemistry, which ignore the crucial role that communication plays in life and instead view it as functioning like a machine. According to recent observations, meaningful communication that is context-dependent and network development (and regulation) are essential to all living species.
Instead of originating from mistakes, evolutionary important novel nucleotide sequences now seem to have come from social agents like viruses, their parasitic relatives, and associated RNA networks. A new definition of life for the twenty-first century can be arrived at by applying the known characteristics of natural languages and communication, wherein communicative interactions are fundamental to all aspects of life processes. For a new definition of life to outperform the story of the twentieth century, it must incorporate the most recent scientific findings regarding the interactions between viruses, RNA networks, and cells.
