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LACK OF TRANSITIONAL FORMS. "Understanding the evolution of complex multicellular individuals from unicellular ancestors has been extremely challenging, largely because the first steps in this process occurred in the deep past (>200 million years ago). As a result, transitional forms have been lost to extinction, and little is known about the physiology, ecology, and evolutionary processes of incipient multicellularity." https://lnkd.in/d3qm3Gr View in LinkedIn

REPEATED BUT RARE EVENTS. "Even though multicellularity has evolved dozens of times in the last 3.5 billion years, this transition is still rare (occurring, most recently, ~200 MYA in the brown and the volvocine algae)." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

REPEATED MULTICELLULAR EVENTS. "Compared with other major transitions in evolution that occurred just once (for example, the origin of eukaryotes), multicellularity has evolved repeatedly." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

MULTICELLULARITY IN YEAST. "Recent study claims to have evolved multicellular yeast in the laboratory de novo." https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

PREVIOUSLY, we looked at the example of E. Coli grown in very controlled conditions for thousands of generations, spontaneously developing the ability to metabolize citrate. Now we look at another example of controlled evolution experiments with the development of multicellularity in yeast. View in LinkedIn

CONFLICT MEDIATION. "Yet by successfully mediating these conflicts, eukaryotes may have paved the way for repeated evolution of multicellularity, which could occur simply by coopting the existing within-cell mechanisms of conflict mediation into between-cell ones." Sounds easy. https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

THE ENERGY EXPLANTATION. "Any evolutionary transition in which the lower-level units carry out energy conversion and allocation will be extraordinarily challenging. This is the central reason why eukaryotes only evolved once." https://lnkd.in/dNEtvR8 View in LinkedIn

MANTRA OF FIXED ANGLES. "Why do freezing water molecules arrange themselves so easily and consistently at the 120 degree angle that forms this hexagonal structure? Our science does not yet provide a good explanation for that. Ice forms in lots of other configurations too. And the angles involved in those await explanation as well." https://lnkd.in/dmgcCBk View in LinkedIn

PUNCTUATED STASIS. "The fossil record shows that long periods of stasis are often punctuated by bursts of rapid evolution, presumably due to shifts in selective conditions and dramatic evolutionary responses. Over the history of life, multicellularity has evolved repeatedly in unrelated phylogenetic groups. The potential for the evolution of multicellularity may be less constrained than is frequently postulated." http://www.pnas.org/content/109/5/1595.full View in LinkedIn

KEPLER, father of modern astronomy was born 1752, December 27th. "A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy." https://lnkd.in/dvhwdZY View in LinkedIn