The article formulates a hypothesis about the possibility of a unified solution of two fundamental problems of biology on the basis of participation of the Auger effect as a filter in the evolutionary processes; these are a) the inhomogeneity of the elemental composition of living systems in terms of atomic weight (the existence of “leaders” and “outsiders”) and b) the unique stability of homochiral biopolymers with respect to fluctuations of loci of opposite symmetry. We have shown that both paradoxical phenomena can be explained on the basis of one and the same radiation process - Auger cascade after the formation of a vacancy in the K-shell with the subsequent "Coulomb explosion" in the biopolymer, which, however, is impeded by electronic neutralization - "flooding" from the rest of the intact biopolymer chains. It was found that the high damageability is associated with the presence of additional electronic shells, as well as with the existence of chiral deformation of the biopolymer. These two circumstances make it possible to resolve the paradoxes both qualitatively and quantitatively. In particular, the proposed hypothesis explains the existence of carbon life and the impossibility of silicon life. In addition, the enhancement of destruction from the Auger cascade with an increase in the chiral angle revealed special points of the damage to the chiral biopolymer - the contact areas of two domains with different chiralities, which are “washed out” by ionizing radiation with an increased probability, preventing the formation of heterochiral polymers. It is noted that the processes underlying these two paradoxes are, apparently, good examples of the general concept of “complexity”. It is indicated that the Auger cascade is only one of the types of subthreshold radiation physics processes that can explain a number of low-temperature phenomena in biology.