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The Seven Pillars of Life
Abstract
Current interest in discovering life in other galaxies and in recreating life in artificial systems creates a desire to define the foundations of life. Naming and elucidating these fundamental principles, their operation, and why they are essential to life allows us to think differently about the goals and therapeutic approaches of current research. In this essay, Koshland defines the seven pillars of life as program, improvisation, compartmentalization, energy, regeneration, adaptability, and seclusion.
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Cited by
A Universal Definition of Life: Autonomy and Open-Ended Evolution
Ruiz-Mirazo, K., Peretó, J., & Moreno, A. (2004) · Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere · doi:10.1023/b:orig.0000016440.53346.dc · Cited by 393
Is there a common chemical model for life in the universe?
Benner, S. A., Ricardo, A., & Carrigan, M. A. (2004) · Current Opinion in Chemical Biology · doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2004.10.003 · Cited by 363
A short peptide synthon for liquid–liquid phase separation
Abbas, M., Lipiński, W. P., Nakashima, K. K., Huck, W. T. S., & Spruijt, E. (2021) · Nature Chemistry · doi:10.1038/s41557-021-00788-x · Cited by 355
Cleland, C. E., & Chyba, C. F. (2002) · Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere · doi:10.1023/a:1020503324273 · Cited by 347
Varieties of Living Things: Life at the Intersection of Lineage and Metabolism
Dupré, J., & O'Malley, M. A. (2009) · Philosophy and Theory in Biology · doi:10.3998/ptb.6959004.0001.003 · Cited by 326
Metadata
- Authors
- Koshland, D. E.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2002-03-22
- Volume
- 295
- Issue
- 5563
- Pages
- 2215-2216
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1593684180
- Cited by
- 299
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 3.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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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.
