Biopolym. Cell. 2008; 24(5):412-425.
Discussions
Microcosm of living: evidence of nonobviousness
1Kordium V. A., 1Moshynets E. V., 1Tsapenko M. V., 2Adamchuk-Chalaya N. I., 1Irodov D. M., 1Andrienko V. I., 1Shpilevaya S. P.
  1. Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, NAS of Ukraine
    150, Akademika Zabolotnoho Str., Kyiv, Ukraine, 03680
  2. M. G. Kholodny Institute of Botany, NAS of Ukraine
    2, Tereschenkivska Str., Kyiv, Ukraine, 01601

Abstract

In current biology there is a pronounced asymmetry in our knowledge of life. All essential results in molecular biology, molecular genetics, and biochemistry are accomplished on rather limited model objects. Thus, a general concept of life is based on these few results, and this inadequate understanding of life has been extrapolated to the whole Biosphere. Such approach is reasonable for eukaryotes due to their fundamental universality in genome organization. However, for prokaryotes, which are mainly uncultivable and hardly accessible in their natural substrata even for direct observation, such approach is unjustified. The concept of a potentially universal method for studying micro-world in natural substrata is formulated in the article, the results of method application are shown.
Keywords: micro-community, uncultivable forms, unusual forms, nondestructive method

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