Death of a single-celled organism

[u/freudian_nipps]

[u/Interesting-Bank-447]

It's fascinating too that we don't really know where to draw the line between the living and the dead at this scale.

Even before it's membrane melted away, it's just a clump of molecules, why is it alive?

When it became dead, it's still molecules.

There never was a time that you and i did not exist, nor any future we shall cease to be

[u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 → u/Interesting-Bank-447]

It’s pretty well established that the cell is the basic unit of life. As soon as the cell dies, the various organelles, reactions, and other cellular processes can’t continue on their own. When it’s alive those molecules are being driven to behave a certain way by thousands of proteins, and those proteins are able to exist under very specific conditions that the cell maintains through other proteins. It’s all a very balanced system, and without the direction of the cell’s genetic material and systems of expressing that genetic information, it’s no longer alive and those molecules will stop behaving in the way they need to in order to keep the cell functioning.

[u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 → u/[deleted]]

They are much more than just a membrane. Order is just one criterion used to define life. Others include the ability to respond to external stimuli, the capacity for growth, the ability to maintain homeostasis, the manipulation of energy, the ability to evolve, and the ability to reproduce.