Ever wonder what it would be like to be captured and assimilated by the BORG on Star Trek, or to clone identical copies of yourself like Michael Keaton in Multiplicity? Turns out that while cloned copies of genetic material may be possible, human beings will always be as individual as snowflakes. The reason? It's at the tips of your fingers.

Identical twins do not have identical fingerprint patterns. This is because fingerprints, which are different on all human beings, are formed in a combination of genetic coding and arbitrary nerve growth in a fetus. Two children can mature in the same womb, but slight differences in heat, pressure, nutrition and cell growth means that their fingerprints will not be the same.

To learn more about the ins and outs of genetic engineering, check out Get Ready For Human 2.0 by Lybi Ma on the Discover website archives:www.discover.com