multicellularity

The poorly understood Fonticula alba, a relative of fungi and animals, hunts bacteria with a mechanism that resembles cancer and fungal growth.

The microscopic marine animal Trichoplax adhaerens may use rapid changes in cell shape to avoid being ripped apart by forces in the ocean.

The unicellular ancestor of animals may have harbored some of the molecular tools that its many-celled descendants use to coordinate and direct cell differentiation and function, scientists show.

An experimental evolution study shows that more cheaters arise when bread mold fungal cells are less related to one another.

Researchers identify a molecule that may have been key to the surprisingly common transition from single-celled ancestors to today’s complex, multicellular organisms. 

Deriving physiologic first principles

Researchers show that tissues are more likely than single cells to suffer damage during cryopreservation because of the tight junctions between cells.

A vacation from your lab doesn’t have to mean a break from fascinating developments on the life science front.

Molecules, cells, or vertebrates—when individuals move and act as a single unit, surprisingly complex behaviors arise that hint at the origins of multicellularity.

Physicists and biologists are working together to understand cooperation at all levels of life, from the cohesion of molecules to interspecies interactions.

A single-celled relative of animals forms colonies when exposed to a bacterial product, hinting at the possible origins of multicellularity.

Using an artificial selection paradigm, researchers watch as unicellular yeast evolve into snowflake-like clusters with distinct multicellular characteristics.

Editor’s Choice in Developmental Biology

Tiny fossil tracks embedded in a California rock formation that was once part of an ancient river may be evidence that freshwater ecosystems arose around 100 million years earlier than what is generally believed.

The volvocine algae are a model system for studying the evolution of multicellularity, as the group contains extant species ranging from the unicellular Chlamydomonas to a variety of colonial species and the full-fledged multicellular Volvox varieties.

The switch from single-celled organisms to ones made up of many cells has evolved independently more than two dozen times. What can this transition teach us about the origin of complex organisms such as animals and plants?