Question

‘Metabolism and consciousness become defining properties of living organisms'. Justify with reason.

Answer 1

Hint: All of an organism's activities like growth, movement, development, responsibility, reproduction, etc. are due to metabolism. Metabolism does not display in a non-living entity. All organisms can sense and respond to environmental factors, from primitive prokaryotes to most advanced and complex eukaryotes. Consciousness is the state of being aware of the environment.

Complete answer:
The ability to split the complex material and transform it into simpler ones that form energy further is metabolism. The energy helps bring many metabolic and physiological functions that make metabolism a critical and life-defining property.
Consciousness is characterized by the ability of the body to respond to a stimulus. If an organism can respond to stimuli, that implies that it is conscious. External stimuli may be physical, biological, or chemical. As stimuli define the property of existence, so consciousness can be regarded as the property that defines a living organism.
If a patient lies in a coma and is assisted by machines for different tasks, the lack of self-awareness and consciousness of the external world is expected to occur. Most of those patients never return to normal life.

Note:
Catabolism and anabolism are two types of metabolism. Anabolism involves all of the reactions that "build-up." It is also called constructive metabolism because the synthesis of complex substances from simpler ones is involved. Catabolism is "reactions to breakdown". It is also known as destructive metabolism because it involves splitting into simpler ones of complex substances. In higher species, the sensations are permeated by sense organs e.g., eyes, ears, and nose. Plants do not have such advanced organs for the senses. However, external factors such as light, water, temperature, chemicals, other species, etc. do react to them. Photoperiods (duration of daily light exposure) affect the reproduction of animals and plants that breed during unique seasons.