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Comment
. 2013 Dec 24:2:e01893.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.01893.

Multicellularity: From brief encounters to lifelong unions

Bradley J S C Olson  1
Affiliations
Comment

Multicellularity: From brief encounters to lifelong unions

Bradley J S C Olson. Elife. .

Abstract

Could the transient aggregation of unicellular organisms have paved the way for the evolution of the multicellular animals?

Keywords: Capsaspora; alternative splicing; cell differentiation; evolutionary transitions; multicellularity; opisthokonts.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests:The author declares that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Two mechanisms of multicellular evolution.
On the left, organisms that evolved multicellularity by aggregative development have a life cycle where individuals from the environment aggregate, and cooperate to form a multicellular organism. These cells need not be genetically identical (indicated by the different colors). In many organisms with this life cycle, only some cells are dispersed for reproduction. On the right, organisms that evolved multicellularity by clonal development remain attached together after each cell division, forming groups of undifferentiated cells. Each cell in the group can produce a genetically identical reproductive cell, or ‘propagule’, that produces genetically uniform offspring. If aggregative development and clonal development are both important for multicellular evolution in metazoa, as the results of Sebé-Pedrós et al. suggest, then a new unified mechanism—‘cooperative clonal development’—is required.
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