The DOI matches its Crossref record; 13 of the 13 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Defining Life
Open accessAbstract
Any definition is intricately connected to a theory that gives it meaning. Accordingly, this article discusses various definitions of life held in the astrobiology community by considering their connected "theories of life." These include certain "list" definitions and a popular definition that holds that life is a "self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." We then act as "anthropologists," studying what scientists do to determine which definition-theories of life they constructively hold as they design missions to seek non-terran life. We also look at how constructive beliefs about biosignatures change as observational data accumulate. And we consider how a definition centered on Darwinian evolution might itself be forced to change as supra-Darwinian species emerge, including in our descendents, and consider the chances of our encountering supra-Darwinian species in our exploration of the Cosmos. Last, we ask what chemical structures might support Darwinian evolution universally; these structures might be universal biosignatures.
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Citations
Cites
Search for Past Life on Mars: Possible Relic Biogenic Activity in Martian Meteorite ALH84001
McKay, D. S., Gibson, E. K., Thomas-Keprta, K. L., Vali, H., Romanek, C. S., Clemett, S. J., Chillier, X. D. F., Maechling, C. R., & Zare, R. N. (1996) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.273.5277.924 · Cited by 1,883 · cited 12×
“Nevertheless, Gilbert Levin, who designed the labeled release instrument, still argues that his test detected life on Mars.”
InfluentialChiral Symmetry Breaking in Sodium Chlorate Crystallization
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The search for organic substances and inorganic volatile compounds in the surface of Mars
Biemann, K., Oro, J., Toulmin, P., Orgel, L. E., Nier, A. O., Anderson, D. M., Simmonds, P. G., Flory, D., Diaz, A. V., Rushneck, D. R., et al. (1977) · Journal of Geophysical Research · doi:10.1029/js082i028p04641 · Cited by 607
Cleland, C. E., & Chyba, C. F. (2002) · Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere · doi:10.1023/a:1020503324273 · Cited by 347
A stomatin-like protein necessary for mechanosensation in C. elegans
Huang, M., Gu, G., Ferguson, E. L., & Chalfie, M. (1995) · Nature · doi:10.1038/378292a0 · Cited by 307
Koshland, D. E. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1068489 · Cited by 299
Origins of life : the central concepts
Deamer, D. W., & Fleischaker, G. R. (1994) · Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. eBooks · Cited by 237
Recent results from the Viking Labeled Release Experiment on Mars
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Phosphates, DNA, and the Search for Nonterrean Life: A Second Generation Model for Genetic Molecules
Benner, S. A., & Hutter, D. (2002) · Bioorganic Chemistry · doi:10.1006/bioo.2001.1232 · Cited by 129
Self-citationExpanded Genetic Alphabets in the Polymerase Chain Reaction
Yang, Z., Chen, F., Chamberlin, S. G., & Benner, S. A. (2009) · Angewandte Chemie International Edition · doi:10.1002/anie.200905173 · Cited by 121
Self-citation
Cited by
Cockell, C. S., Bush, T., Bryce, C., Direito, S., Fox-Powell, M., Harrison, J. P., Lammer, H., Landenmark, H., Martin-Torres, J., Nicholson, N., et al. (2016) · Astrobiology · doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1295 · Cited by 396
The algorithmic origins of life
Walker, S. I., & Davies, P. C. W. (2013) · Journal of The Royal Society Interface · doi:10.1098/rsif.2012.0869 · Cited by 196
Chemical Evolution and the Evolutionary Definition of Life
Higgs, P. G. (2017) · Journal of Molecular Evolution · doi:10.1007/s00239-017-9799-3 · Cited by 58
The Multiple Paths to Multiple Life
Kempes, C. P., & Krakauer, D. C. (2021) · Journal of Molecular Evolution · doi:10.1007/s00239-021-10016-2 · Cited by 33
Predicting species emergence in simulated complex pre-biotic networks
Markovitch, O., & Krasnogor, N. (2018) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0192871 · Cited by 19
Metadata
- Authors
- Benner, S. A.
- Venue
- Astrobiology
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-12
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 1021-1030
- ISSN
- 1531-1074 (ISSN-L)
- 1557-8070
- OpenAlex
- W4236920505
- Cited by
- 265
- References
- 13
- FWCI
- 2.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
