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OPEN QUESTION. "Both of these factors facilitate the transition to multicellular-level selection and the subsequent evolution of multicellular complexity. Little, however, is known about the origin of the single-cell bottleneck in extant taxa." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

COMMONALITY ENSURED. "Unicellular bottlenecks are present in distantly related multicellular lineages, and appear to be a critical step in the evolution of multicellular complexity. The unicellular bottleneck limits genetic diversity, and hence genetic conflict, among the cells of extant multicellular organisms, and ensures that all cells constituting a multicellular individual share a common developmental history and environment." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHESIS. "More broadly, our finding that simple multicellularity can evolve in less than a year in both Chlamydomonas and Saccharomyces suggests that genetic barriers (for example, few mutational paths to multicellularity) may be less restrictive than ecological barriers, namely a lack of persistent selective advantages for cellular clusters." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT. "Although epigenetic regulation was likely a necessary precondition for the emergence of multicellular organization (at least in extant lineages), it does not necessitate that such a transition from unicellularity to multicellularity will occur or explain how it occurs." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

CO-OPTION. "These results demonstrate that the unicellular bottleneck, a trait essential for evolving multicellular complexity, can arise rapidly via co-option of the ancestral unicellular form." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

MANY FROM THE FEW. "Importantly, this innovation was crucial to the later emergence of multicellularity by permitting differentiation of many cell types from a single genomic inventory." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

QUANDARY. "Although it is possible that a control population could evolve multicellularity in a few months, this would be an unexpected outcome given that hundreds of independent lineages in the genus Chlamydomonas (including C. reinhardtii) have failed to do so over hundreds of millions of years." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

DIVERSIFIED OPTIONS. "The reasoning is straightforward: epigenetic factors permit a single cell line with a given genotype to express many different phenotypes on which natural selection might act, thereby providing a competitive advantage through diversification." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn

CITRATE EXAMPLE. "An excellent example is the evolution of citrate catabolism in E. coli (a highly beneficial trait) in 1 out of 12 experimental populations after 31,500 generations of evolution in citrate-containing medium. No citrate utilization occurred in the other 11 populations, even after 8,000 further generations of selection. Even though E. coli was unlikely to evolve the ability to use citrate, this selection experiment clearly shows that the possibility existed." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION IS SELECTIVE ADVANTAGE. "Such a vast jump in the potential information content of single cells is believed to have led to a dramatic selective advantage in unicellular populations capable of epigenetic regulation and inheritance." https://lnkd.in/dTS7dFy View in LinkedIn