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.