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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

SILK INNOVATIONS. "The evolutionary diversification of spiders is attributed to spectacular innovations in silk. Spiders are unique in synthesizing many different kinds of silk, and using silk for a variety of ecological functions throughout their lives, particularly to make prey-catching webs." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn

SPIDER BEHAVIORAL SHIFTS. "Accompanying cribellum loss in both groups is a release from substrate-constrained webs, whether by aerially suspended webs, or by abandoning webs altogether. These behavioral shifts in silk and web production by spiders thus likely played a key role in the dramatic evolutionary success and ecological dominance of spiders as predators of insects." https://lnkd.in/db9PJGx View in LinkedIn

REPEATED EVOLUTIONARY LOSSES. "Within the “RTA clade,” which is the sister group to orb-weaving spiders and contains half of all spider diversity, >90% of species richness is associated with repeated loss of cribellate silk and abandonment of prey capture webs." http://www.pnas.org/content/106/13/5229.full View in LinkedIn