This is not so much about the understanding of life as it is about the definition of life.

tshaddox an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think a precise definition of life is particularly important or of particular interest to most biologists. This thing is life in the sense that it’s definitely in scope of being studied by biologists (same is true for viruses, of course). And the reason it is speculated that it may be crucial to understanding life is mentioned in the article: “This organism might be a fascinating living fossil—an evolutionary waypoint that managed to hang on.”

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IAmBroom 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Eh, you're quibbling with words. We're getting closer to the quantum (indivisible) definition of life, and that's understanding.

	▲	willis936 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I don't think that they are. The term life, as it's currently defined, is not very useful. The reality is that there is a very colorful spectrum of microscopic biology and that a single bin of "alive" and "not alive" is like trying to paint the mona lisa with a single pixel. This scishow video gives a good look at the tip of the iceberg. https://youtu.be/FXqmzKwBB_w
	▲	Noaidi 13 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As they said in another comment, life is the ability to decrease entropy. That definition would tie in quantum mechanics.