ANTS and infertile humans are not alive, but parasitic DNA is. That’s the
view of a Polish researcher who has proposed a new, universal definition of
life.
He claims it will lay to rest arguments about what is and isn’t alive, and
might offer insights into when life on Earth got started. And if we ever find
something that looks like life on another planet, his definition could help us
settle whether it’s alive or not.
Bernard Korzeniewski of the Institute of Molecular Biology at Jagiellonian
University in Kraków, Poland, says that definitions of life usually list
the attributes…
