Title: Preprint Highlight: Clonal Development, Not Aggregation, Drives the Transition to Multicellularity in an Isogenic Model System
Abstract: Multicellular groups can arise either by clonal development (cells stay together following cell division) or by aggregation (single cells come together). For decades it has been assumed that clonal development facilitates evolution of multicellularity; however, this hypothesis has never been directly tested. Here budding yeast populations that can form either clonal (snowflake yeast, ace2Δ) or aggregative ( flo1Δ) multicellular groups were allowed to evolve for hundreds of generations. Genomic analyses and mathematical modeling show that clonal development drives the transition to multicellularity more efficiently than aggregation. This study experimentally establishes for the first time how and why clonal development is the widespread strategy for the evolution of complex multicellular organisms and sets a robust framework for understanding multicellular evolution.
Publication Year: 2022
Publication Date: 2022-10-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
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