Talk:Non-cellular life

Prions are smaller than viroids

"Viroids are the smallest infectious pathogens known to biologists". This statement in the entry is not factually correct. 2600:1009:B164:FC49:E973:18F3:B83D:C21D (talk) 23:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

As I see, this sentence has been remoed meanwhile. Nevertheless prions should be included, details can be found in the table provided at Kingdom (biology)#Comparison of top level classification. Ernsts (talk) 08:30, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Theoretical/opinion-based article presented as factual - rampant problems and not scientifically grounded

The entire basis of this article, to include the validity of its current title, is not accepted by the majority of the scientific community. This is even stated in one of the page's main sources, which directly states that it is ignoring academic discussion of the matter, runs contrary to commonly-accepted opinion, and is generally the personal opinion of its sole author (Trifonov, 2012).

I have not analyzed the sources in detail, but those I did look at were of extremely poor quality. Single authors, anthropological preaching about what is fundamentally a scientific subject, etc. One even appears to now redirect to some kind of scam website?

Given that the cell theory of life is accepted by the large majority of experts, the fundamental nature of this article is rejected by most scientific sources - ergo, most do not agree that there can be any non-cellular life. In this regard, I propose page deletion if no credible academic sources can be found to substantiate this page's continued existence (per reason 7 of the Deletion policy). Not opinion articles, not single scientists making statements, an actual credible academic resource or organization that supports this page.

If not deletion, massive rewrite will be necessary. Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 04:09, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed NomzEditingWikis (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not a biologist. I'm a science fiction author, reading about this as background research for a book. But here's the problem with deleting the page.

At least for non-biologists, when talking about life in total, we need a classification for things like viruses. If one pops up to the page about Domain (biology), there is a clear division between cellular life and "everything else". There absolutely needs to be a page to cover "everything else". We can't ignore viruses when talking about life, even if it's a page that starts out by saying, "biologists do not consider any non-cellular arrangement such as viruses 'life'" and then explain why not.

If the page needs a rewrite or a replacement, and if you're qualified to start it -- then start it. Find better sources. Add an introductory paragraph talking about how viruses aren't consider life, but acknowledge any conflict. This is wikipedia -- we can all contribute. Jplflyer (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Trifonov 2012 is only cited once on this page. This page has existed since 2006, and the Trifonov paper was added in 2017 in this edit, and there's a decent amount of text left from before. So, I don't agree that Trifonov's opinion dominates.

I haven't checked all the other references, but on a cursory view they don't seem outright awful (aside from a couple). Articles from Nature and Science are in there; not that those journals have never made mistakes, but the articles don't deserve to be summarily dismissed. You may be applying a standard that's impossible to meet. This isn't medicine, this is a fairly niche biology topic that, coming down to the definition of "life", is more philosophical than experimental.

Are any of the cited articles from predatory journals or otherwise unusable sources? Apocheir (talk) 23:42, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Disagree

Cell theory of life does not necessarily discredit nor refute the idea of a separate from of life, such as "capsid-encoding organisms" (viruses). Let's not forget that the definition itself of "life" or the meaning of "being alive" is not set in stone; nobody agrees on a fixed or universally accepted set of criteria for what constitutes as "life" and they're often arbitrary anyway.

But I'm sure you and I can both agree on one thing: viruses carry genes and are capable of evolution. But also: viruses are capable of replication, and the only problem is that they need a host to do so; but there are also species of prokaryotes that share the same problem (i.e. parasites). And organelles like mitochondria are often seen as only a part of an organism, rather than organisms of their own; yet, they are/were cells themselves – elementary units of life. You can't just arbitrarily delete Non-cellular life purely because it didn't fit within Cell Theory (there's probably an argument for this somewhere in WP:Notability).

Sources

CheckNineEight (talk) 03:52, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: EEB 4611-5611-Biogeochemical Processes

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation–supported course assignment, between 19 January 2025 and 4 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sayumi Ranasinghe (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Lewi1724, Felljes43, NMohamed22.

— Assignment last updated by DJY009 (talk) 14:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Prions are not life

Prions are not living entities; they don't evolve. You can just read the article about it to further explain why they aren't, but suffice it to say that this subsection doesn't belong in an article mainly talking about viruses and other genetic entities – which may be 50/50 on who considers them "living" vs otherwise, but it is undeniable that they have genetics, unlike prions. CheckNineEight (talk) 23:48, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

As someone who has a past as a researcher on amyloids, I wholeheartedly agree. I wonder however if a small section could be nonetheless included to explain that they are sometimes erroneously discussed as such. cyclopia^speak! 10:44, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

We could add a new section, perhaps the title could be "Prions, prion-like molecules, and the origin of life" or something like that, based on that one citation from the old subsection. I think this is the only paragraph from it that's worth keeping:

The origin of prions remains a subject of debate. Some researchers argue that prions may be remnants of ancient pre-nucleic acid life, while others suggest they evolved within modern organisms as self-propagating protein conformations. Prion-like mechanisms are now being recognized in non-disease contexts, such as in the regulation of memory in neurons and in yeast epigenetic inheritance.

I suppose the point of even having prions on this article at all is that, if one can argue that life can be defined as anything that can even have genetics at all (viroids and viruses), then one can arguably go even further than that and define life as anything with complex-enough molecules or chemistries having the capacity to self propagate – like how prions do?

Sources

CheckNineEight (talk) 12:25, 8 August 2025 (UTC)