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Organism
Individual living life form

An organism is generally defined as a living individual exhibiting autonomous reproduction, growth, and metabolism, although this definition excludes entities like viruses that evolve but lack independent metabolism. Complex cases such as colonial organisms, including eusocial insect colonies and the marine siphonophore, challenge traditional ideas, as their parts cooperate like organs in a single body. Evolutionary biologists David Queller and Joan Strassmann argue that cooperation is the key defining trait of an organism, encompassing collaborations like the fungus and alga partnership in lichen or the permanent sexual anglerfish union.

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Etymology

The term "organism" (from the Ancient Greek ὀργανισμός, derived from órganon, meaning 'instrument, implement, tool', 'organ of sense', or 'apprehension')23 first appeared in the English language in the 1660s with the now-obsolete meaning of an organic structure or organization.4 It is related to the verb "organize".5 In his 1790 Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant defined an organism as "both an organized and a self-organizing being".67

Whether criteria exist, or are needed

Among the criteria that have been proposed for being an organism are:

  • autonomous reproduction, growth, and metabolism8
  • noncompartmentability – structure cannot be divided without losing functionality.9 Richard Dawkins stated this as "the quality of being sufficiently heterogeneous in form to be rendered non-functional if cut in half".10 However, many organisms can be cut into pieces which then grow into whole organisms.11
  • individuality – the entity has simultaneous holdings of genetic uniqueness, genetic homogeneity and autonomy12
  • an immune response, separating self from foreign13
  • "anti-entropy", the ability to maintain order, a concept first proposed by Erwin Schrödinger;14 or in another form, that Claude Shannon's information theory can be used to identify organisms as capable of self-maintaining their information content15

Other scientists think that the concept of the organism is inadequate in biology;16 that the concept of individuality is problematic;17 and from a philosophical point of view, question whether such a definition is necessary.181920

Problematic cases include colonial organisms: for instance, a colony of eusocial insects fulfills criteria such as adaptive organisation and germ-soma specialisation.21 If so, the same argument, or a criterion of high co-operation and low conflict, would include some mutualistic (e.g. lichens) and sexual partnerships (e.g. anglerfish) as organisms.22 If group selection occurs, then a group could be viewed as a superorganism, optimized by group adaptation.23

Another view is that attributes like autonomy, genetic homogeneity and genetic uniqueness should be examined separately, rather than requiring that an organism possess all of them. On this view, there are multiple dimensions to biological individuality, resulting in several types of organism.24

Organisms at differing levels of biological organisation

Differing levels of biological organisation give rise to potentially different understandings of the nature of organisms. A unicellular organism is a microorganism such as a protist, bacterium, or archaean, composed of a single cell, which may contain functional structures called organelles.25 A multicellular organism such as an animal, plant, fungus, or alga is composed of many cells, often specialised.26 A colonial organism such as a siphonophore is a being which functions as an individual but is composed of communicating individuals.27 A superorganism is a colony, such as of ants, consisting of many individuals working together as a single functional or social unit.2829 A mutualism is a partnership of two or more species which each provide some of the needs of the other. A lichen consists of fungi and algae or cyanobacteria, with a bacterial microbiome; together, they are able to flourish as a kind of organism, the components having different functions, in habitats such as dry rocks where neither could grow alone.3031 The evolutionary biologists David Queller and Joan Strassmann state that "organismality" has evolved socially, as groups of simpler units (from cells upwards) came to cooperate without conflicts. They propose that cooperation should be used as the "defining trait" of an organism.32

Queller and Strassmann's view of organisms as cooperating entities at differing levels of biological organisation33
LevelExampleCompositionMetabolism,growth,reproductionCo-operation
VirusTobacco mosaic virusNucleic acid, proteinNoNo metabolism, so not living, not an organism, say many biologists;34 but they evolve, their genes collaborating to manipulate the host35
Unicellular organismParameciumOne cell, with organelles e.g. cilia for specific functionsYesInter-cellular (inter-organismal) signalling36
Swarming protistanDictyostelium (cellular slime mould)Unicellular amoebaeYesFree-living unicellular amoebae for most of lifetime; swarm and aggregate to a multicellular slug, cells specialising to form a dead stalk and a fruiting body37
Multicellular organismMushroom-forming fungusCells, grouped into organs for specific functions (e.g. reproduction)YesCell specialisation, communication38
Permanent sexual partnershipAnglerfishMale and female permanently fastened togetherYesMale provides male gametes; female provides all other functions39
MutualismLichenOrganisms of different speciesYesFungus provides structure, absorbs water and minerals; alga photosynthesises40
Joined colonySiphonophoreZooids joined togetherYesOrganism specialisation; inter-organism signalling41
SuperorganismAnt colonyIndividuals living togetherYesOrganism specialisation (many ants do not reproduce); inter-organism signalling42

Samuel Díaz‐Muñoz and colleagues (2016) accept Queller and Strassmann's view that organismality can be measured wholly by degrees of cooperation and of conflict. They state that this situates organisms in evolutionary time, so that organismality is context dependent. They suggest that highly integrated life forms, which are not context dependent, may evolve through context-dependent stages towards complete unification.43

Boundary cases

Viruses

Main article: Virus

Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms, because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction, growth, metabolism, or homeostasis. Although viruses have a few enzymes and molecules like those in living organisms, they have no metabolism of their own; they cannot synthesize the organic compounds from which they are formed. In this sense, they are similar to inanimate matter.44 Viruses have their own genes, and they evolve. Thus, an argument that viruses should be classed as living organisms is their ability to undergo evolution and replicate through self-assembly. However, some scientists argue that viruses neither evolve nor self-reproduce. Instead, viruses are evolved by their host cells, meaning that there was co-evolution of viruses and host cells. If host cells did not exist, viral evolution would be impossible. As for reproduction, viruses rely on hosts' machinery to replicate. The discovery of viruses with genes coding for energy metabolism and protein synthesis fuelled the debate about whether viruses are living organisms, but the genes have a cellular origin. Most likely, they were acquired through horizontal gene transfer from viral hosts.45

Comparison of cellular organisms and viruses46
CapabilityCellular organismVirus
MetabolismYesNo, rely entirely on host cell
GrowthYesNo, just self-assembly
ReproductionYesNo, rely entirely on host cell
Store genetic information about themselvesDNADNA or RNA
Able to evolveYes: mutation, recombination, natural selectionYes: high mutation rate, natural selection

Evolutionary emergence of organisms

The RNA world is a hypothetical stage in the evolutionary history of life on Earth during which self-replicating RNA molecules reproduced before the evolution of DNA and proteins.47 According to this hypothesis "organisms" emerged when RNA chains began to self-replicate, initiating the three mechanisms of Darwinian selection: heritability, variation of type and differential reproductive output. The fitness of an RNA replicator (its per capita rate of increase) would presumably have been a function of its intrinsic adaptive capacities, determined by its nucleotide sequence, and the availability of external resources.4849 The three primary adaptive capacities of these early "organisms" may have been: (1) replication with moderate fidelity, giving rise to both heritability while allowing variation of type, (2) resistance to decay, and (3) acquisition of and processing of resources5051 The capacities of these "organisms" would have functioned by means of the folded configurations of the RNA replicators resulting from their nucleotide sequences.

Organism-like colonies

The philosopher Jack A. Wilson examines some boundary cases to demonstrate that the concept of organism is not sharply defined.52 In his view, sponges, lichens, siphonophores, slime moulds, and eusocial colonies such as those of ants or naked molerats, all lie in the boundary zone between being definite colonies and definite organisms (or superorganisms).53

Jack A. Wilson's analysis of the similar organism-like nature of siphonophores and jellyfish54
FunctionColonial siphonophoreJellyfish
BuoyancyTop of colony is gas-filledJelly
PropulsionNectophores co-ordinate to pump waterBody pulsates to pump water
FeedingPalpons and gastrozooids ingest prey, feed other zooidsTentacles trap prey, pass it to mouth
Functional structureSingle functional individualSingle functional individual
CompositionMany zooids, possibly individualsMany cells

Synthetic organisms

Scientists and bio-engineers are experimenting with different types of synthetic organism, from chimaeras composed of cells from two or more species, cyborgs including electromechanical limbs, hybrots containing both electronic and biological elements, and other combinations of systems that have variously evolved and been designed.55

An evolved organism takes its form by the partially understood mechanisms of evolutionary developmental biology, in which the genome directs an elaborated series of interactions to produce successively more elaborate structures. The existence of chimaeras and hybrids demonstrates that these mechanisms are "intelligently" robust in the face of radically altered circumstances at all levels from molecular to organismal.56

Synthetic organisms already take diverse forms, and their diversity will increase. What they all have in common is a teleonomic or goal-seeking behaviour that enables them to correct errors of many kinds so as to achieve whatever result they are designed for. Such behaviour is reminiscent of intelligent action by organisms; intelligence is seen as an embodied form of cognition.57

References

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  55. Clawson, Wesley P.; Levin, Michael (1 January 2023). "Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 138 (1): 141. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blac116. ISSN 0024-4066. https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fbiolinnean%2Fblac116 ↩

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  57. Clawson, Wesley P.; Levin, Michael (1 January 2023). "Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 138 (1): 141. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blac116. ISSN 0024-4066. https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fbiolinnean%2Fblac116 ↩