title: Fundamental taboos of biology.
abstract: This paper formulates some taboos relating to living systems and cognition of these systems: in nature, there exist no two identical living complex multicellular organisms; there is no way to create an exact copy of a multicellular organism; there is no way to obtain two identical clones of a unicellular organism if they contain a sufficiently large number of cells; based on comparing present-day organisms, it is impossible to restore the structure of the first living cell and the processes that have led to its emergence; it is impossible to create a living cell from its separate simple constituents; the mechanisms determining cell vitality are essentially incognizable.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 123182, Russia. edsver@freemail.ru
authors.forename: E D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Sverdlov
mesh_terms: D001695:Biology; D002875:Chromosomes; D019369:Life; D009154:Mutation