Self-generated and reproducible dynamics in "gene years" represent life.

In a recent article (1), Trifonov has developed an approach, conceptually inspired by principal component analysis (PCA), for arriving at a consensus definition of “life” as “self-reproduction with variations”. In appreciation of the sound analytical effort applied rigorously on a comprehensive body of literature, I will refer to both the approach and the definition as “Trifonovian”. The Trifonovian approach has to be commended in its effort to evolve a minimalistic, and at the same time an all-inclusive, definition of life. In fact, from the literature on molecular components of living systems, the Trifonovian definition of life is clearly a direct reflection of the ideas of “consensus” sequences at the level of DNA/RNA and (in specific cases) even proteins, and homology modeling (including minimal functional “motifs”) in protein structures. Thus, while appreciating the Trifonovian approach, it is also important to carefully consider the severe limitations of consensus/similarity approaches (applied for the molecular components) that have pushed the limits of experimental (both computational and wet-laboratory) biology into increasingly complex/sophisticated formalisms that have unfortunately not provided universal insights till date. In fact, some universal insights have been achieved only by comprehensive (computational and/or wet-laboratory) rather than consensus based approaches (2-5).