Replaying the evolution of multicellularity

Or Shalev; Xiaozhou Ye; Christoph Ratzke

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2023.07.007

Replaying the evolution of multicellularity

Trends Ecol Evol. 2023 Oct;38(10):910-912. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2023.07.007. Epub 2023 Aug 14.

Authors

Or Shalev¹, Xiaozhou Ye¹, Christoph Ratzke²

Affiliations

¹ Interfaculty Institute for Microbiology and Infection Medicine Tübingen (IMIT), Cluster of Excellence EXC 2124 'Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections' (CMFI), University of Tübingen, Calwerstrasse 7/1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.
² Interfaculty Institute for Microbiology and Infection Medicine Tübingen (IMIT), Cluster of Excellence EXC 2124 'Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections' (CMFI), University of Tübingen, Calwerstrasse 7/1, 72076 Tübingen, Germany. Electronic address: christoph.ratzke@uni-tuebingen.de.

PMID: 37586948
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2023.07.007

Abstract

The first organisms on Earth were presumably unicellular. At one point, evolution shaped these individual cells into multicellular organisms, which was a significant transition in the history of life on Earth. To investigate how this change happened, Bozdag et al. re-ran evolution in the lab and observed how single-celled yeast forms large multicellular aggregates.

Keywords: evolution; multi-level selection; multicellularity; yeast.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Biological Evolution*
Earth, Planet
Origin of Life*
Yeasts