ArticleOrigins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life1998
About various definitions of life.
Article in Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, 1998. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed.
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- The challenge of distinguishing living from non-living entities.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2026Review
- Life - A glimpse into the phenomenon.Bioinformation · 2026Article
- Discriminating abiotic and biotic organics in meteorite and terrestrial samples using machine learning on mass spectrometry data.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Reflections on Keywords: Definition, Life and Origin.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Rethinking life and predicting its origin.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2024Article
- Is Life Binary or Gradual?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Circular at the very beginning: on the initial genomes in the RNA world.RNA biology · 2024Article
- Theoretical perspective on synthetic man-made life: Learning from the origin of life.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2023Review
- Reflections upon a new definition of life.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2023Article
- From autocatalysis to survival of the fittest in self-reproducing lipid systems.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2023Review
- What is life?Molecular biology reports · 2021Article
- An ecological framework for the analysis of prebiotic chemical reaction networks.Journal of theoretical biology · 2020Article
- Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon: A Tale of Different Levels of Description.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- The origin of biological homochirality along with the origin of life.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Article
- Towards a General Definition of Life.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2019Article
- Plausible Emergence of Autocatalytic Cycles under Prebiotic Conditions.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- From molecular to cellular form: modeling the first major transition during the arising of life.BMC evolutionary biology · 2019Article
- The Ladder of Life Detection.Astrobiology · 2018Article
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1 author.
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Abstract
The old question of a definition of minimal life is taken up again at the aim of providing a forum for an updated discussion. Briefly discussed are the reasons why such an attempt has previously encountered scepticism, and why such an attempt should be renewed at this stage of the inquiry on the origin of life. Then some of the definitions of life presently used are cited and briefly discussed, starting with the definition adopted by NASA as a general working definition. It is shown that this is too limited if one wishes to provide a broad encompassing definition, and some extensions of it are presented and discussed. Finally it is shown how the different definitions of life reflect the main schools of thought that presently dominate the field on the origin of life.
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