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.
Researchers identify a molecule that may have been key to the surprisingly common transition from single-celled ancestors to today’s complex, multicellular organisms.
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.
Using an artificial selection paradigm, researchers watch as unicellular yeast evolve into snowflake-like clusters with distinct multicellular characteristics.
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?