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posted by mrpg on Saturday February 23 2019, @06:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the algae dept.

The transition took place over the course of 50 weeks and was caused simply by the introduction of a predator to the environment. Time-lapse videos are available in the supplementary info.

The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve. Predation is hypothesized as one selective pressure that may have driven the evolution of multicellularity. Here we show that de novo origins of simple multicellularity can evolve in response to predation. We subjected outcrossed populations of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to selection by the filter-feeding predator Paramecium tetraurelia. Two of five experimental populations evolved multicellular structures not observed in unselected control populations within ~750 asexual generations.

De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation


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  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:05PM

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday February 24 2019, @04:05PM (#805953)

    I was trying to give a 50,000ft overview of how random noise (mutation) fuels a decidedly non-random process (evolution), and figured neutral mutations weren't worth much more than an acknowledgment in that context.

    You make a good point that they serve as sort of a genetic "savings account" against sudden environmental changes though. In fact, it's actually an advantage that neutral mutations don't tend to spread throughout the species, instead drifting through minorities of the population more-or-less at random. That provides a great deal of genetic diversity across the species, some of which will likely become relevant, for better or worse, if the environment changes suddenly. In that sense it gives a species an evolutionary jump start towards evolving in response to major changes.

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