Researchers have discovered that single-celled yeast can transform into complex multicellular organisms in environments favoring clumpy growth.
via Quanta Magazine
At least 20 times in life’s history — and possibly several times as often — single-celled organisms have made the leap to multicellularity, evolving to make forms larger than those of their ancestors. In a handful of those instances, multicellularity has gone into overdrive, producing the elaborate organisms known as plants, animals, fungi and some forms of algae. In these life forms, cells have shaped themselves into tissues with different functions — cells of the heart muscle and cells of the bloodstream, cells that hold up the stalk of a wheat plant, cells that photosynthesize. Some cells pass their genes on to the next generation, the germline cells like eggs and sperm, and then there are all the rest, the somatic cells that support the germline in its quest to propagate itself.
