What is Life? Sir Paul Nurse - 2020 James Martin Memorial Lecture

For this year's James Martin Memorial Lecture, Sir Paul Nurse will consider some of the fundamental ideas of biology with the aim of identifying principles that define living organisms.
There is a focus on the cell, the simplest unit exhibiting the characteristics of life, but the principles that will be discussed apply to living organisms more generally.
Sir Paul Nurse FRS
Director, Francis Crick Institute
Paul Nurse is a geneticist and cell biologist who has worked on how the eukaryotic cell cycle is controlled. His major work has been on the cyclin dependent protein kinases and how they regulate cell reproduction. He is Director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, and has served as President of the Royal Society, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK and President of Rockefeller University.
He shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and has received the Albert Lasker Award, the Gairdner Award, the Louis Jeantet Prize and the Royal Society's Royal and Copley Medals. He was knighted in 1999, received the Legion d'honneur in 2003 from France, and the Order of the Rising Sun in 2018 from Japan. He served for 15 years on the Council of Science and Technology, advising the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and is presently a Chief Scientific Advisor for the European Union and a trustee of the British Museum.
Oxford Martin School,
University of Oxford
www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk

[@daignat]

Such a great scientist and lecturer. I simply enjoy his presentations as really special moments of science. Thanks Professor!

[@nycbearff]

This is an update of this lecture - he has given it several times, so earlier versions are on KZbin, but since he's actively working and thinking, the lecture changes and broadens as his understanding deepens even more. This is more advanced, and more astonishingly fundamental, than his excellent Royal Institution version of this lecture just a year earlier. It's pretty simple, which is not easy to do. Some of his best teaching moments are in the Q & A. Watch this! And in a much more shallow observation, I love his clothes. Seriously, they lift up my heart. That perfectly fine coat which probably has a good many more years in it has been places and heard things that most of us would give our right pinky to have gone along with. And the comfy jumper underneath is perfectly coordinated with it. Good going, Professor Nurse.

[@myopenmind527]

I found the RI talk too simplistic (a list of what life does rather that what is life) but I’ll watch this based on your recommendation.

[@nycbearff]

@@myopenmind527 It's a short lecture, so it can't help but be an overview that leaves out a lot of information. But he has reduced some very, very complex things to simple underlying functions here. It's conclusions from a lifetime of study and thought.

[@desperateastro]

A good & clear lecture , giving an overview of biology. Useful for the many studying biology who feel themselves to be lost in a vast collection of seemingly disconnected facts.

[@landlord440illuminate8]

Class of 2022 am here. Legends

[@taras.4823]

Wonderful lecture!

[@freshbits5585]

Didn't learn anything new from this. Expected more.

[@landlord440illuminate8]

I am a cell

[@gert.korthof]

Paul Nurse in his talk: (1) "the cell is the basic structural and functional unit of life". (2) viruses are alive. However, if one accepts that all life is cell based, one cannot say any more that viruses are alive. Because viruses are not cells. These two statements contradict each other. One has to choose: either one accepts (1) all life is cell based or: (2) viruses are alive, but one cannot hold both statements at the same time.

[@caricue]

Gert Korthof, I used to have this opinion, but just because a life form does not spend its entire life cycle in the form of a cell does not make it not alive. When a virus hijacks the cellular machinery of a living cell, that becomes its cellular form temporarily as it completes its life cycle. Many other creatures have strange or attenuated stages of growth, but they are all still alive. I don't think prions are alive, but they might disagree. In a way, it might not even be an issue. On PBS Spacetime, they pointed out that Energy is a concept, not a thing. Maybe Life is a concept that we have concocted, and not more than another natural phenomena that results in animated matter running around trying to figure stuff out.

[@gert.korthof]

@@caricue Thank you for your comment! Are you saying 'a virus BECOMES a cell'? At the same time you say: "a virus hijacks the cellular machinery of a living cell". But that is quite different. I explain what the consequences are of your view in my blog: korthof.blogspot.com/2020/12/nobelprize-winner-paul-nurse-viruses.html If you still disagree after reading, please do comment there!

[@myopenmind527]

Life is best considered at the level of the #ecosystem. In that sense viruses do form part of the *biosphere (the 4th geosphere). I hope that help clarify. I think we are slowly coming to terms with what life is and what drove it into existence.

[@caricue]

@@myopenmind527 Any classification system is automatically a human construct that we have to "impose" onto nature for our convenience to make it easier for us to understand what is going on, so whatever system is most useful for you is the one you should use. I'm beginning to think that even the category we call "life" is really just a concept that us humans use so we can conceptualize the natural world in a coherent way. Nature doesn't have categories.

[@williamharvey4732]

Vibrations are very much involved with life .

[@Stan6468]

I am simply amazed how evolutionist are in such denial of facts. He admits it is a language such as we write and talk even as computer code but then proceeds to say LIFE invented it> That LIFE is GOD. WHY not admit it.

[@sheelaghcooper1609]

Excellent lecture!