Question

metabolism is a defining feature of all organism without exception. isolated metabolic reactions in vitro are not living things but surely living reactions. comment

Answer 1

Metabolism includes both anabolic and catabolic reactions.These reactions are enzyme catalysed and are required by all living organism to maintain their life, for energy, for reproduction, for every process that occurs within. Without these reaction no physiological process is possible. Like in case of excretion, the digested food need to be metabolised for uptake of nutrition and discarding of the waste by-products.At the time of these reaction, some reactions occur individually within the cell or outside that don't directly catalyse the reaction, but the intermediates of such reactions are useful for the metabolic reaction. So these individual reactions are also considered as living reactions.