Unexplainable - Origins: The meaning of “life”

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

For every definition of life, there’s a creature that sends us right back to the drawing board. This is the third episode in our three-part series, Origins, about the beginnings and boundaries of life on Earth. For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! [e-mail] We read every email. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. This episode is brought to you by Defender. With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a weighting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. It's unexplainable. I'm Brian Resnick, and this is the third and last episode of our origin series.

So far, we've been talking about how life on Earth started, that first somehow came water. And then in that water, the right ingredients mixed, and, form some very basic living thing. From that point on, life has just been thriving. You know, there are swoopy flyers, microscopic squigglys, giant earth-shaking elephants. Life is everywhere. But it turns out there's a question we've kind of taken for granted. We've talked about what it might take to make a very basic living cell,

but that doesn't mean we know what life fundamentally is. No one has been able to define life in some people. people will tell you it's not possible to. This is science writer Carl Zimmer. It may simply be that we are trying to put life in a box when it's not the sort of thing that you can fit into boxes. This feels like it should be easy. Like a homer question for a little kid.

Dogs. Alive. Creepy crawlies. Alive. Rocks. Not alive. It does feel like it should be easy because we feel it. You know, our brains are actually tuned to recognizing things like biological motion.

We're hardwired for recognizing life, but that doesn't actually mean that we know what it is. Carl really wanted to know why. Why can't we define life? Like imagine like astronomers not agreeing on the definition of a star. But this is even more fundamental. It's his life. And they kept sort of gnawing on me. and then I realized that before I knew it, I got pulled into this vortex, and it's been fascinating. That vortex, it became a book. It's called Life's Edge, The Search for What It Means to Be Alive,

and that's what we're going to talk about this week. What is life? Why has this simple question been so hard to answer? What's so cool about this question is that it really forces us to take a look at the world around us, because for every definition of life, there's a creature that just sends us right back to the, drawing board. Every marvelous living creature on our earth is built of complex living cells.

Life is made up of atoms and molecules and chemical reactions. But what makes them alive? How are there some examples of definitions of life that are close or useful or, you know, how much this come about? What is life? So are there some examples of definitions of life that are close or useful or, you know, anything? Well, there are hundreds. Hundreds of definitions of life that scientists themselves have published. And I have a list here. So just give you a few.

Life is an expected collectively self-organized property of catalytic polymers. Life is a metabolic network. Life is a new quality brought upon an organic chemical system by a process of existence of open. Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last common, universal ancestor and includes all its descendants. I feel like each of those definitions could probably use about 10 minutes of unpacking. Do we have anything kind of simpler? So perhaps the best known is sometimes called the NASA definition of life.

In 1992, NASA brought together some scientists to make some plans about how the agency should go look for life on other planets. It kind of occurred to them, well, maybe we should actually have a definition of what this is that we're going to help NASA go find. Yeah, it can't just be a gut feeling when you're NASA. Right. They said that life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. That's it. All right.

That sounds fine to me. What's wrong with it? I think part of the problem is there are lots of kind of edge cases where things get really hard. And so then people start arguing about, who gets to be in the club. Okay, I want to hear about a few of these edge cases. I know one of the most famous ones are viruses. Can you explain why viruses have been just so confounding when, you know, are they alive?

Are they not alive? So in some ways, viruses just seem incredibly alive. I mean, we're talking during a pandemic. Yeah. There are, who knows how many copies of SARS-CoV-2 that have been. produced over the past few years through this process of reproduction. Not only that, but those viruses mutate, and some of those mutations make them better at certain jobs.

It's made of genes. It's made of protein. I mean, what more do you want? I mean, it seems alive to me, right? Yeah, that seems alive. But you might say no, because if what's really important, to you is, for example, metabolism, you know, eating stuff, well, viruses don't do it. Viruses don't have any way of taking in molecules and fashioning those molecules by themselves

into new molecules. They don't have a mouth. They don't have a stomach. They don't have enzymes. They don't have any of that. All they have are basically instructions that reprogram a cell, And that cell, not the virus, makes new viruses. That feels pretty alive-e. Are they missing something else other than not being able to eat stuff? Well, I mean, homeostasis, that's another really important thing about life that some people really think is important, that it's stable, that it can withstand all the chaos outside of itself.

That's what we do, you know, keep our body temperatures, very steady, you know. Viruses can't do that. because, again, they don't have all of that molecular equipment for keeping themselves stable. So somebody actually asked one of the people who came up with the NASA definition of life, well, what about viruses? And he said, no, not according to this definition, they're not. So really, depending on who you talk to in the scientific community, you'll get a different answer to that question. If you're out with a bunch of virologists or other molecular biologists and you really want to rile them up and get a good argument going. Always looking to do this.

There you go. Our virus is alive. And then just step back and let the fireworks begin. You know, you mentioned that NASA definition, life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. So viruses check Darwinian evolution. They're a chemical system, but they're not self-sustaining. Right. So if viruses aren't alive, what are they?

I don't know, because, I mean, it would be weird to say that they're dead because, you know, kind of by definition, have to be alive first to be dead. Would you say they're inert or inanimate? Well, I don't know. Like, I mean, something that can go through such dramatic changes, but also be passing genes down through the generation. through this process of heredity, I don't, you know, to say that that has nothing to do with life,

just, you know, it feels weird. Then what problem happens if you were to expand that definition using the right language to include viruses? Why does that make people unhappy? Well, you know, one issue is, where do you stop? So, like, if you have a more expansive definition of life, what else could be considered alive? Red blood cells are an interesting example.

If I took all your red blood cells out of you, you'd be dead, done. And the reason being that these cells have lots of proteins inside of them that do lots of important jobs, particularly getting oxygen from your lungs and faring them around your body. So here are these things. They have these boundaries like living things do. They carry out complicated biochemical jobs like with oxygen. and people will talk about the lifespan of red blood cells. You know, they basically are only around for a few months in your body,

and then they die, then they get destroyed. So you'd think that something that has a lifespan is alive. What are these things? Are they alive or not? They have some of the characteristics of life, some really important ones, but they're totally missing one of these really central ones. The central one being... Genes. Genes.

Red blood cells have no genes. There's no way for them to grow and divide and replicate. That's it. But just to sum up, like the case that red blood cells are alive distinct from us, what is that? Well, that's interesting that you would say that distinct from us. Do things have to be distinct from you to be alive? Oh. I had no idea.

Well, think about this. So there are some kinds of insects, like cicadas, for example. that grow special organs inside their bodies where certain kinds of bacteria live inside the cells. These bacteria are vital to the cicadas because they will make certain kinds of amino acids for the insects that the insects can't get from eating plants. These bacteria, in turn, get lots and lots of food from the cicadas,

and they cannot live outside of the cicadas. They will die. They are chemically incapable of surviving. They have their own genes. They can grow and replicate, but they're not distinct. They actually have to be inside a cicada cells. So they are as merged with them as you can imagine. Are they alive?

Well, you know, I think you can make the case, but you can't, if one of your rules is, well, it has to be distinct, then I don't think they meet that. Yeah, when you're describing that, it's like, oh, that kind of It kind of sounds like a virus. I mean, viruses are a lot more alive in a way than these bacteria. These bacteria get passed down from mothers to their offspring. They're not floating around. Viruses, you know, there are some viruses.

They can float around in the air for miles before finding a new host and then infecting them. Whereas there are a lot of bacteria that have become fundamentally trapped inside host cells and have totally changed. They've given up everything that they would need to be able to survive outside. I mean, we ourselves are resident to some former bacteria.

Two billion years ago, our single-celled ancestors conformed a union with these oxygen-consuming bacteria, and they became these little squishy things inside of our cells called mitochondria, which generate our fuel.

We take out our mitochondria, we're dead. They still have a few genes left inside them, but you will never see mitochondria just busting out of a cell and just crawling off by themselves. They can't do it. They can't, they, they, they don't have the means to survive. So is the, and I imagine the answers we don't know, so is the bacteria in the cicadas alive and our mitochondria not alive? Or, or, well, you know, You know, another way to talk about is to say, well, they're involved in the process of living. Is there also examples of, like, the opposite thing? So, you know, something that on the surface seems very much like you put it in the life category.

But when you look at it, it still confuses our definitions of life. Yeah, I think that nature does a great job of throwing up exceptions to the rule. And my favorite one is this fish called the Amazon Molly. This is a fish. It looks completely innocuous. You would not look twice as it. It's this tiny little fish, and it darts around in streams in Mexico and the southern United States. It evolved several hundred thousand years ago when two other species of Mali interbred.

And now that hybrid, the Amazon Mali, it only produces daughters. They're all female, and they only produce daughters who are clones of themselves. Okay. However, if you just keep an Amazon Mali by itself or a whole tankful Amazon Mali's by themselves, they will not reproduce. The reason being that they actually still have to mate with a male from one of those ancestral species.

This is a species that cannot reproduce within itself. It needs to go and find a male of another species of fish. The sperm triggers this process of its eggs starting to develop, but that female Amazon Molly destroys the sperm and all of the genes inside of it. It's like, thank you very much. I'm on my way. And then once it's been able to mate with a male fish from another species, it then just makes a whole bunch of clones of itself.

So biologists call them sexual parasites. There's a funny headspinny thing here because that also sounds like what the virus does, but the virus isn't alive. It needs another host to create. more copies of its exact self, but the virus seems so different than a fish that swims around? Right, exactly, exactly. They're both sort of, you know, taunting us in the same way. It's a fish, it's alive, of course.

But when you actually try to put into words what it means to be alive, the Amazon Molly and things like it can get you all tangled up. Up next, something kind of surprising. The case that maybe life is just undefined. It's all about you. And when you fly with Virgin Atlantic in their upper class cabin, they take the VIP treatment to the next level. With a private wing to check in and your own security channel at London Heathrow, you can glide from your car to their clubhouse, a destination in its own right in 10 minutes or less. On board, you can treat yourself to your own private suite to stretch out in with lots of storage space, a lie flat bed and delicious dining from beginning to end. Just be sure to leave room for dessert.

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Feel the fun. Play-O-Joe. Forget about the lasagna. Let's celebrate. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concern about your gambling or that of someone close to you. Call 86531-2600 or visit Connexonterio.ca. Carl Zimmer has just been hurting my brain. I have no idea what life is.

No one does. And there's no perfect circle around what's alive and what's merely life-like. Right. And again, like we're trying to draw these circles and maybe that's part of the problem. And, you know, in a way that, you know, this is more philosophical problem than a scientific one. And philosophers have been thinking about these issues for quite a while. A very simple way of trying to understand this problem and perhaps one solution is instead of life, say like, well, what's a game? You know, what are games? And, you know, like, if you try to come up with some totally like sharp circle definition of games, you're going to fail.

Are games really that hard? Well, I mean, is it games have to involve cards? They can, but they can also involve tokens like a monopoly. Do you make money playing games? Well, certain games, yes. And others, you have to pay to play them. Do you have to win at a game? Well, sometimes, you know.

But you never have a child go to a toy store and go to the game section and be like, what is this? I don't understand. Like, the kids are like, this is great. I want that, I want that, I want that. Like, they get what games are. And what Wittgenstein said was that, you know, games are these things that have family resemblances, you know.

So they're all connected in this sort of network of related meaning. So, you know, yeah, red blood cells are not exactly like us, and they're not like us in some very profound ways. The Amazon Mollies are not quite like us. They're probably more like us than a virus. So maybe we can be thinking about living things as these things that are connected by family resemblances. Yeah, I feel so wishy-washy, though, of like red blood cells, like all in the same family

as, you know, wombats and giraffes. I don't know. But they're like the relatives you only see like at Thanksgiving, you know? Like they're not close relatives. So is this something we actually need to? to do as humans decide what life is? Is this, in your research and reporting on this, are we coming to a stop here?

This is a dead end. Like, let's not try. Or do we still need to try to find that perfect definition? Well, again, it really depends on who you talk to. So there will be people who will say, no, we really do need a definition of life for scientific purposes. So NASA can have some idea what they're doing for example. We need definition of life for legal purposes, you know, because everyone's shouting

about, quote, unquote, when life begins. There are all these situations where we really need clear-cut definitions of life. But, you know, there are other people who say a definition of life is absurd and a waste of time. There's a philosopher named Carol Cleland, who has really argued very strongly about this and said, this is like alchemists defining water. in 1500. Just coming up with like a list of characteristics of water that you think somehow encompasses it, that's a waste of time. You know, what you need to be doing is be doing experiments and come and leading to a theory, you know. Like, alchemist could not appreciate that if you look inside of water, there are these molecules that are composed of hydrogen and oxygen. And the way that

they bond, it leads to all sorts of different behaviors that we know of for water, that's what they need to focus on. And the more time you spend just, you know, yelling about definitions, the less time you're spending actually finding a new theory of life. And it sounds like we're not there for that atomic theory of what life is. No, we're not there. But, you know, I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, wasn't there for when it came to chemistry. He would pull his hair out trying to understand what water is. He would write in his journals like, I don't know, like, you know, it's different colors, it has different tastes. It's like, what is this thing? He was banging his head against the wall.

You know, we happen to live at a time where a theory of chemistry is pretty well worked out so we can understand water, whereas we're not there yet for life. I like knowing there's something I know that Leonardo da Vinci didn't, but I'm still hungry for more here. Carl says, you know, maybe in our lifetimes we can get better answers, that scientists are really starting to think deeply on this sort of atomic level view of life, and maybe they'll come up with something. But if they do get a definition of life, the biggest test is still to come. So if we could find another form of life somewhere else,

that would just change the game. profoundly. And, you know, maybe we would have to step back and say, like, okay, what's our theory to explain life both on Earth and, you know, off on Alpha Centauria or wherever? You know, that would be saying, like, how do we explain water as a liquid and as ice? If we found life on another world, that would help us answer a lot of the questions we've asked in this series. It could teach us whether water is really necessary for life. You know, maybe, you know, some sort of like liquid methane or ethane or some bizarre, you know, gasoline-like substance, that maybe something could be living in.

It could teach us different ways life could be built. You know, it might not use DNA. Maybe it has some other molecule that is replicated. Maybe we wouldn't even recognize it as life. I would not be surprised at all if our first encounter with something that seems like life just leaves us completely baffled. Or there's a final option here. It could be terrifyingly similar to us,

so similar that maybe we'll learn that life didn't start on Earth at all. Maybe it came from somewhere else. Whatever the answers are, what's just so exciting about the science of life is we're really just still getting started. This episode was reported by, me, Brian Resnick, and produced by Noam Hassenfeld. Edits from Meredith Haudenot and Catherine Wells.

Christian Ayella is our engineer who creates all the funky fresh sounds. Zoe Mullock checked the facts. Mandy Nguyen is working on some jokes. And Bird Pinkerton? Well, she was staring at the tiny doctor, balancing on the edge of a soda can. This is the last hospital of its kind, he said. Bird, you're our only hope. Thanks again to Carl Zimmer.

His book is called Life's Edge, The Search for What It Means to Be Alive. Great read. This is the end of our origin series. If you have ideas for future series on our show, our email is Unexplanable at Vox.com. Let us know. And if you feel like leaving us a review or a rating,

that would be very much appreciated. Unexplanable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we'll be back next week.