Generally accepted conditions which life fulfills:
It is important to note that life is a definition that applies primarily at the level of species, so even though many individuals of any given species do not reproduce, possibly because they belong to specialized sterile castes (such as ant workers), these are still considered forms of life. One could say that the property of life is inherited; hence, sterile hybrid species such as the mule are considered life although not themselves capable of reproduction. It is also worth noting that non-reproducing individuals may still help the spread of their genes through such mechanisms as kin selection.
For similar reasons, viruses and aberrant prion proteins are often considered replicators rather than forms of life, a distinction warranted because they cannot reproduce without very specialized substrates such as host cells or proteins, respectively. However, most forms of life rely on foods produced by other species, or at least the specific chemistry of Earth's environment.
Some individuals contest such definitions of life on philosophical grounds, and offer the following as examples of life: viruses which reproduce; flames which "grow"; certain computer software programs which are programmed to mutate and evolve; future software programs which may evince (even high-order) behavior; machines which can move; and some forms of proto-life consisting of metabolizing cells without the ability to reproduce.
Still, most scientists would not call such phenomena expressive of life. Generally all six characteristics are required for a population to be considered a life form.
There is no truly "standard" model for the origin of life, but most currently accepted scientific models build in one way or another on the following discoveries, which are listed roughly in order of postulated emergence:
As of 2006, no one has yet synthesized a "protocell" using basic components which has the necessary properties of life (the so-called "bottom-up-approach"). Without such a proof-of-principle, explanations have tended to be short on specifics. However, some researchers are working in this field, notably Jack Szostak at Harvard University. Others have argued that a "top-down approach" is more feasible. One such approach attempted by Craig Venter and others at The Institute for Genomic Research involved engineering existing prokaryotic cells with progressively fewer genes, attempting to discern at which point the most minimal requirements for life were reached. The biologist John Desmond Bernal, coined the term Biopoesis for this process, and suggested that there were a number of clearly defined "stages" that could be recognised in explaining the origin of life.
Stage 1: The origin of biological monomers
Stage 2: The origin of biological polymers
Stage 3: The evolution from molecules to cell
Bernal suggested that Darwinian evolution may have commenced early, some time between Stage 1 and 2.
Earth is the only planet in the universe known to harbor life. The Drake equation has been used to estimate the probability of life elsewhere, but scientists disagree on many of the values of variables in this equation. Depending on those values, the equation may either suggest that life arises frequently or infrequently.