Talk:Ergastic substance

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This definition doesn't make sense to me. Nothing inside a cell is living - not DNA, not enzymes, not anything. The cell is the smallest unit that has the characteristics of life. Maybe you mean these substances don't participate in metabolism - but I'm not sure that works either..... ike9898 03:08, Mar 18, 2004 (UTC)

I admit it is difficult to separate what inside the cell is "living" and what is not, since any one component cannot live by itself alone. However, cell biologists have no problem with making such a separation, even if it is in a sense artificial (for example the plant cell wall is non-living, the cell membrane is living). Non-participation in metabolic processes is frequently seen as part of the definition of ergastic substances, but not a very good one, unless one better defines which metabolic processes are being considered. The fact that biproducts of a metabolic process are "dumped" (excreted by you; crystallized in the cell by a plant) seems not to really exclude them from the metabolic process in my mind. Starch grains are clearly for storage purposes, and therefore hardly out of the metabolic loop; but are regarded as ergastic substances. The heart of your question (and complaint) lies partly at the feet of defining life. In the end, is it really all just non-living machinery fooling us that there is something special going on? The term is a real one (as used by botanists anyway) and I've tried to select from the best definitions I could find to make it clear. Could be just a convenient way of classifying intracellular parts..but I submit that your "The cell is the smallest unit that has the characteristics of life" is not all that safe a definition either. - Marshman 04:39, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I went back and read the definition, and now I think it was the implications of having included "non-living" there that brought the baggage to the fore that you were objecting to. By deleting it may not change much, but avoids making distinctions where such distictions are very difficult - Marshman 07:11, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)