The Evolution of Multisilo Organisms

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As organisms evolve, it's not just changing the genome and giving yourselves new capacities. There's real physics constraints here that shape what is possible and whatis not. And this is very true than in almost any other biological system I know of. It requires these simple multisilo organisms to construct to confront stresses that act over length scales that they have no history of dealing with. A hundred microns, they're not used to dealing with with avoiding house cell packing causes strain to accumulating groups and causes them to fracture. So understanding how multi savlor organisms evolve isn't just a question of biology or understanding seulo differentiation and gen regulation but also about how multi secular bodies become biophysically tough

We’ve talked about the very origin of life, but certain transitions along its subsequent history were incredibly important. Perhaps none more so than the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms, which made possible an incredible diversity of organisms and structures. Will Ratcliff studies the physics that constrains multicellular structures, examines the minute changes in certain yeast cells that allows them to become multicellular, and does long-term evolution experiments in which multicellularity spontaneously evolves and grows. We can’t yet create life from non-life, but we can reproduce critical evolutionary steps in the lab.

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William Ratcliff received his Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota. He is currently Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. Among his awards are a Packard Fellowship and being named in Popular Science‘s “Brilliant 10” of 2016.

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