Living systems sense their surroundings and report that information to control systems for the appropriate response. Living systems can sense damage and repair it to its original functional state. Living systems can switch among several states in response to short term and reversible changes in their environment. Living systems can evolve over time, adopting new forms in response to long term, permanent changes in their environment. Living systems can self assemble thousands of individual parts in a precisely defined functional structure.
Living systems can build complex structures hierarchically.
Collagen, a fiber that rivals steel in strength, is built through successive aggregation of single amino acid strands into triple helices, triple helices into microfibrils, microfibrils into fibrils, fibrils into fibers. Living systems use templates, such as DNA, as blueprints for structures where there is no thermodynamically or kinetically available selection for that structure. Living systems can create a low entropy structure of importance by increasing the entropy of the entire system. Protein folding, creating a highly ordered arrangement of the constituent amino acids, is driven by the maximization of the entropy of the surrounding water. Living systems can reproduce themselves.