Year: 2022

ANOTHER EXPERIMENTAL EXAMPLE of experimental evolution follows, using algae this time, to explore the development of multicellular features from a unicellular foundation. View in LinkedIn

MULTICELLULAR EVOLUTION IN VITRO. "Here we show that multicellular complexity, including development from a single cell, can evolve rapidly in a unicellular organism that has never had a multicellular ancestor. We subject the alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to conditions that favour multicellularity, resulting in the evolution of a multicellular life cycle in which clusters reproduce via motile unicellular propagules." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

MULTICELLULARITY. "Cyanobacteria evolved simple filamentous multicellularity over 2.5 billion years ago, and entire clades of multicellular organisms have arisen in the last 200 million years (for example, brown algae and the volvocine algae." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

Artificial intelligence and off-grid living: Top designers imagine the year 2066 View in LinkedIn

"BROWN ALGAE are also one of only a small number of eukaryotic lineages that have evolved complex multicellularity." https://lnkd.in/dt66se8 View in LinkedIn

LOST ROADMAP OF TRANSITION. "Most origins of multicellularity are ancient and transitional forms have been lost to extinction, so little is known about the potential for multicellularity to evolve from unicellular lineages, or the route through which a multicellular life history arises." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

COUPLING. "A hallmark feature of complex multicellularity is a two-stage life cycle in which multicellular individuals develop from a single cell. While this process is often coupled with sexual reproduction, mitotically produced unicellular propagules are also widespread (for example, in multicellular red, green, and brown algae and parthenogenetic animals)." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

SINGLE CELL BOTTLENECK. "The ubiquity and persistence of the unicellular bottleneck has been attributed to the fact that it purges within-group genetic variation, eliminating the potential for among-cell evolutionary conflicts that might otherwise erode multicellular complexity." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

EVIDENCE LACKING. "Although there is little doubt that a unicellular bottleneck serves the present function of preventing among-cell conflicts in large multicellular organisms, there is no direct evidence that it originally arose as an adaptation for this function." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn

ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS. "Instead, the unicellular bottleneck may have evolved in the absence of genetic conflict for other reasons, creating a multicellular body plan largely immune to future intercellular conflicts as a side-effect. This key trait may therefore catalyse the evolution of multicellular complexity, facilitating the origin and expansion of cellular division of labour." https://lnkd.in/dU8HRX5 View in LinkedIn