Sentences with word «multicellularity»

The King lab at Berkeley has pioneered the exploration of the origins of multicellularity by looking at choanoflagellates for shared characteristics and behaviors conserved by evolution in animals.

These cardinal features of metazoan multicellularity have their origins on the metazoan stem and often are the result of metazoan gene novelties combining with more ancient factors.

But in living choanoflagellates, King believes researchers have a model organism to compare with animals and dissect the roots of animal multicellularity.

And because evolutionary changes can move «sideways and backwards and occasionally forward,» he says it's important to understand when the specific genetic adaptations occurred that allowed unicellular organisms to combine, specialize, and give rise to true multicellularity.

[That] fits with the idea that multicellularity evolved separately [in plants and animals],» says plant geneticist Robert Martienssen of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.

January 7, 2016 Scientists find ancient mutation that contributed to the evolution of multicellular animals A single chance mutation about a billion years ago caused an ancient protein to evolve a new function essential for multicellularity in animals, according to new research co-led by a University of Chicago scientist.

evolved its germ — soma division by repurposing genes initially used for the transition to a simpler form of multicellularity without a germ — soma dichotomy, but found little support for this hypothesis.

In 2008, she was part of a team that sequenced the first genome of a choanoflagellate, Monosiga brevicollis, and in 2012 her lab discovered the bacteria that trigger multicellularity.

The earliest life to show multicellularity is hotly debated, mainly because of questions of definition.

So while unicellularity is clearly a successful way of life for many organisms, for others the collective benefit of multicellularity appears to outweigh the loss of individual fitness for each somatic cell that is denied a chance to pass on its particular genome.

The sponge genome confirms that sponges share much the same genetic tool kit for multicellularity as the rest of the animal kingdom.

The predator - driven strains developed a different sort of multicellularity from the gravity - induced versions.

Perhaps, given enough time, the new multicellular forms will evolve even more surprising capabilities, just as the transition to multicellularity billions of years ago ushered in a world of large and complex life.

Some biologists refer to this as multicellular behaviour rather than true multicellularity, because normal growth occurs when the cells are separate.

The demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica: Reconstructing the ancestral metazoan genome and deciphering the origin of animal multicellularity.

Interpreting the origins of multicellularity is key to understanding the origins of animals, King says, noting that her research «reaches back much further on the family tree than our common ancestors with other primates.»

«The study analysed the genome of these eight species and performed comparative analysis of animal genes important for signalling, neuronal and ionic conduction, epithelia, immunity and reproduction, which are the basic functions associated to multicellularity,» she adds.

This kind of division of labour is one of the hallmarks of multicellularity.

Just a few generations after evolving multicellularity, lab yeasts have already settled into at least two distinct lifestyles.

This provides experimental proof that when evolution makes a great leap forward — such as the origin of multicellularity — organisms can diversify rapidly to take advantage of the change.

Extavour's own lab focuses on dissecting insect embryos and ovaries, searching for genetic clues to the origin of multicellularity and the complex organisms that multicellularity made possible, including Homo sapiens.

And this primal division of reproductive labor has evolutionary consequences: It allows sexual reproduction and fosters genetic diversity and the evolution of multicellularity.

I grant, though, that biologists must be fascinated by the evolution of multicellularity, because we are multicellular creatures.

William Ratcliff, a biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and his collaborators have discovered a surprisingly simple route to multicellularity: a single mutation in yeast that adheres the mother cell to its daughter to create a snowflake - like shape.

These snowflakes grow and divide in a way that provides a clever solution to one of the major pitfalls of multicellularity: the cheater problem, in which lazy cells take advantage of cooperative ones.

To gain complexity, and ultimately, multicellularity, cells needed an energy boost.

The bacteria system in S. rosetta can now be used to answer more specific questions, such as what the benefit of multicellularity might be — a question King and her collaborators at Berkeley are now working to answer.

One strong hint that bacteria may have prompted that ancient transition to multicellularity is that many of today's simplest animals are governed by microbial messages.

The A. queenslandica genome allows us to assess systematically the origin of the six hallmarks of metazoan multicellularity: (1) regulated cell cycling and growth; (2) programmed cell death; (3) cell — cell and cell — matrix adhesion; (4) developmental signalling and gene regulation; (5) allorecognition and innate immunity; and (6) specialization of cell types.

Conventionally the term plant implies a taxon with characteristics of multicellularity, cell structure with walls containing cellulose, and organisms capable of photosynthesis.