Talk:Non-cellular life

Mimivirus proteins

"Mimivirus can make its own proteins" <-- This entire article and specific statements such as this need to be supported by citations to the biomedical literature. --JWSchmidt 13:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

syncytial organisms?

A quick google book search shows plenty of references where professional zoologists call protozoa either 'noncellular' or more commonly 'acellular'. this in reference no doubt to their syncytial organization. why is there no mention of this in the article. if this isnt going to be included then at very least 'acellular' should not redirect here. just-emery (talk) 22:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

If you are going to erase my edit then I think I at least deserve a response. just-emery (talk) 23:12, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

It does not matter how many nuclei any given slime mold cell may have, IT IS STILL CELLULAR. Regarding your second request, ciliates are cellular too; please see: Ciliate#Cell structure. Cheers. BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:04, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Huh? ciliates are multinucleate and lack cell walls between nuclei. thats syncytial. now obviously you are defining 'cellular' as anything that is enclosed within an outer cell wall and that would include syncytial organisms. I dont deny that. But it is a fact that some professional zoologists refer to syncytial organisms as 'acellular' (as a simple google book or google scholar search will show). This is obviously a slightly different way of looking at the definition of 'cellular'. I am not arguing one way or the other. I simply believe that, since 'acellular' redircts here, we owe it to the readers to provide them with a link to the appropriate page. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:34, 2 August 2009 (UTC).

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=syncytial%20acellular%20-vaccine&lr=&sa=N&hl=en&tab=ps Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 20:45, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

http://books.google.com/books?q=syncytial+acellular+-vaccine&btnG=Search+Books Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 10:25, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

>Huh? ciliates are multinucleate and lack cell walls between nuclei. - Lemmiwinks2

Again: It does not matter how many nuclei any given cell may have, IT IS STILL CELLULAR. If some biologists nickname syncytia "acellular", please feel free to add quality references to your entry. Thank you. BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:25, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Up till now you've been quite rational about this. I gave you a link to a google scholar search and to a google book search that shows many many such references. whether they are cellular or not obviously just depends on ones definition of 'cellular' which just depends on how you look at it. English can be quite ambiguous sometimes. it is an established fact that some zoologists use the term 'acellular' when refering to syncytial organisms. since acellular redirects to this article I believe we owe it to the reader to provide a link to the article syncytium and a short explanation (at the very least).

also where are you getting 'threadlike'. ciliates are not threadlike. it would not surprise me though if syncytial worms passed, at some point, through such a stage as you describe.

I really dont think that we are as far apart on all this as you may be thinking we are. I hope we can work together to make this a better article. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 09:57, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Virus & Viroid

Virus & viroid are the only non-cellular "life" known so far. All other enries should be deleted, as the needed references to support such claim are not --and will not be forthcomming. BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:02, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, most of biologists wouldn't classify viruses as life either. They're chemical complexes with some (not all) of the mechanistic character of life, but they're not life forms in their own right.

Based on self-preserving reactions to one's environment, there is a certain sensory being-ness that even bacteria have (and please don't confuse sensory with abstract), but viruses lack even this.

Nevertheless, with some chemical characteristics in common with life, viral taxonomy is still useful even though viruses are non-living; Hence why a Domain Aphanobionta and viral orders (and perhaps even orders of prions and such) within it are useful concepts. So, as far as the Article goes, why not discuss prions and viroids right alongside viruses, when all three are what one might call pseudo-life (together with a few other categories of molecular...entities...that I can't think of right now)? The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 18:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I agree in that most biologists do not consider them living entities (myself included); some biologists though, think they are on the "edge of life" and therefore, the existence of this article. I'd be glad to change the name of this article to something like "organic replicators" if we want include prions, fosmids, cosmids, satellites, phagemids, transposons and such. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk)

I'm also a biologist (I got my B.S. this past May). More to the point, all those things you just mentioned are acellular (they are too simple to be called cells by any means) and have pseudo-life character (they replicate, even if they do need a cell as a host). Both those things are in common with viruses, and I don't see why including them would require changing the Article's name. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 06:11, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hello, nice to meet you. I think that using the words 'pseudo-life' to justify the inclusion of nucleic acid chains as entities is stretching the definition of life quite a bit. Unlike viruses, that list of nucleic acid structures are part of the normal cellular components of bacteria/yeast; moreover I have not seen any text/reference describing them as "non-cellular life." Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 12:37, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Deletions

Deletions: Virus & viroid are the only non-cellular "life" known so far. Most listed entries were phage vectors (viruses) or nucleic acid fragments. Nucleic acids are not vested with life just because they may code information.BatteryIncluded (talk) 20:52, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Life?

Virusses are considered living beings and self replicating machines or self-replicating molecules aren't. This is said in the article and then a link to definition of life is given.

Definition of life

1) homeostasis
- viri don't have homeostasis
- self replicating machines could have homeostasis, e.g. thermostats
2) organisation
-viri are not composed of one or more cells, but ok, this is what this article is about
3) metabolism
-viri don't have a metabolism
-self replicating machines can have a metabolism (for example the use of ATP to get electric energy)
4) growth
-viri cannot grow
-self replicating machines also don't grow
5) adaptation
-viri do change due to environmental effects (their genes mutate), so you could say that it is getting adapted.
-self replicating machines don't adapt
6) response to stimuli
-viri respond to being attached to a host cell
- self replicating machines can also response to stimuli
7)reproduction
-viri can't reproduce themselves. Host cells produce viri
- self replicating machines can self-reproduce

The score is 4 vs 2(or 3) for the self replicating machines. Why are we saying that virusses are living beings while saying that self replicating machines (for example) can't be? Or self replicating molecules? They change due to mutations, they respond to certain stimuli, like the presence of another protein and obviously they can self-reproduce.

Also, (based on reference 5, mimivirus protein involved in translation) the mimivirus can't produce certain proteins that are involved in translation. The virus simply has genes that encode for those certain proteins that are involved in translation. It is still the host that produces the proteins, so it's not a very good argument for the hypothesis that viri have evolved from previous forms that where capable of producing proteins on their own. (because frankly any gene could get into the virus coat, providing it has the appropriate size)

my conclusion is that I think the second line of the first paragraph should be removed. I also think the history section should be modified. I will not change anything for now. --Zaluzar (talk) 16:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)