[amy-petrik-214]

Yea I would def. not call mitochondria "alive" since they are so deeply integrated with the rest of the cell & vice versa.

mito is like <100k bp vs 3000000k bp in human genome (bp = base pair = "character" in a string)

principle derives from the concept of "the selfish gene" or "the red queen" these famous books on the topic. Arms races between X and Y chromosome. Arms race between nucleus and mitochondria, and so on.

or put it this way. why do all animals have sex? because it generates gene sequences that confer fitness more efficiently than self-replication (which is the typical repro method of unix programmers)... .. generates such gene sequences for NUCLEAR DNA that is, mito DNA comes from mom only (the red queen.. .. "mitochondrial eve" ... "y chromosomal adam".. etc). and thus the mito is fundamentally unable to wield the power of evolution, completely evolutionarily outclassed by those nuclear chromosomes. thus exporting all its genes to the nucleus, conferring advantage to all such progeny with their superior power supply

[Tor3]

I don't understand this definition of "alive". Isn't every cell in my body alive? There are definitely differences between an alive cell and a dead one.

[FollowingTheDao]

> There are definitely differences between an alive cell and a dead one.

Energy flow is the difference. but then everything has an energy flow. Losing and gaining electrons. So it is possible that literally everything is alive, don’t you think? Maybe the problem is is that we’re trying to make a definition where none ultimately really exists.