The meaning of life

The organism Mixotricha paradoxa exemplifies the problems of biological classifications and the overly-simplistic views about life on earth that modern biologists are trying to abandon. This microscopic “organism” lives in the gut of termites and helps the termite digest cellulose (fiber). When it was first described in 1933, Mixotricha looked like a single-celled organism with little hairs like cilia all over it and a whip-like tail to help it move. However, decades later, upon further scrutiny, these accessory structures on the Mixotricha turned out to be separate organisms. The thousands of cilia-like structures are actually spirochete bacteria and the “tail” is yet a different bacterium. So, what at first appears to be AN organism is actually several different organisms that depend on each other for survival (a form of symbiosis called mutualism). Or, perhaps it should be classified as one composite organism (E pluribus unum!). After all, consider the human organism. Each human body is an organism with more bacterial cells living on and in it than the number of human cells in it. Furthermore, in every one of the human cells reside tiny little mitochondria. They each have their own circular DNA molecule, which is very similar to bacterial DNA. Mitochondria replicate inside of our cells and carry out metabolic reactions, which benefit our cells and allow us to live. Living things evolve through complex mergers and separations of life systems. Two become one, one becomes two etc…Perhaps the concept of life is stated best by Lynn Margulis, a renowned symbiologist.

" 'What is life?' is a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammer, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It is a material process, surfing over matter like a strange slow wave. It is a controlled artistic chaos, a set of chemical reactions so staggeringly complex that more than 4 billion years ago it began a sojourn that now, in human form, composes love letters and uses silicon computers to calculate the temperature of matter at the birth of the universe."