Nature of life
Jul 22, 2002 Dov in biologicalEvolution forum.
Looking back at a couple of paras in my conjecture posted earlier at http://www.biobitfield.com/henis/
"The first time a peptide served as a template for its duplication was the first appearance of an archaic gene, and the occurrence at which the factors involved in the formation of the duplicate were drawn to stay in a stable association, maybe in the form of a nucleolus, was the occurrence leading to Cellular Life".
and
"Per Pasteur's "all life must come from previously existing life" the not-yet-membraned not-yet-celled peptides were a form of life. If we regard as an "organism" a unit element of a continuous lineage with an individual evolutionary history this has applied also way back at the earlier evolutionary phase of present-day organisms".
It is logical/reasonable to conjecture that throughout their evolution from single archaic to chromosome-association-members genes have been and are now as living organisms as the single or poly celled organisms that evolved from/by them in their drive to proliferate, in the process of accummulating-maintaining bubbles of life-energy.
Dov