When we think about life on Earth, we imagine individual organisms, ranging from animals to bacteria. However, when astrobiologists study life, they must consider not only individual organisms, but also ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole.
In astrobiology, there is a growing interest in the question of whether life is an unusual aspect of the private evolutionary history of the Earth, or whether life is governed by more general organizational principles.
If common principles exist, they can explain properties common to all life on Earth and even on other planets. If “universal biology” exists, it can have important consequences for the search for life on Earth, for the construction of artificial life in the laboratory, and for deciding the question of the origin of life.
In previous studies, scientists mainly looked at specific levels of organization of life, such as individual organisms or ecological communities. These levels form a hierarchy in which individuals consist of interacting molecules, and ecosystems consist of interacting individuals.
In the new work, the object of research conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Hyunju Kim from the School of Earth and Space Research at the University of Arizona, USA, became not individual levels of the hierarchy of life, but the hierarchy itself, that is, the biosphere as a whole.
In this study, scientists constructed biochemical networks using a global database that included 28,146 genomes and metagenomes, as well as 8,658 known biochemical reactions. In the course of the analysis, researchers established similarity laws governing biochemical diversity and the structure of a network uniting individual levels of life organization, from individual organisms to ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole.
Astrobiologists investigate life on a planetary scale
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