Excerpt from ‘Bioelectric Fields at the Beginnings of Life’
What does seem to be key is that replication of life requires a structure that can, when ready, dissipate energy, but to grow and repair it also requires a polymer containing the instructions to build new bits, which perhaps suggests a key component of the definition life is that it can rebuild damaged components, enabling it to maintain dissipation over extended periods of time and robustness to adapt to variations in the environment.
Is it possible to develop an algorithm that efficiently simulates what’s described above? I don’t know, hmmm.