Question: Are crystals living organisms?

Susana Teixeira answered on 25 Jun 2013:

No, they are not. Although us crystallographers sometimes treat them like pets, and talk of them like they were! We say things like ” I need to go feed my crystals” and “look at how much they’ve grown!”.

Crystals are a 3D object that contains many copies of the one same molecule or particle, all ordered in the same orientation in rows and columns. Most living organisms cannot hold these strict symmetric demands that make crystals have clear defined edges and shapes (some viruses come very close to it though!), and the whole organism itself tends to be too large to be the basic particle that repeats inside the crystal.
If you consider a virus a living thing, then they are the exception as they have indeed been crystallised. But the general rule is that you will find in crystals a repeat of salt, protein, dna or some other molecule that is not a whole living organism.