This episode is with William Ratcliff. He is an Associate Professor at the School of Biological Science at Georgia Tech. Will studies the physics that constrains multicellular structures and examines the minute changes in certain yeast cells that allows them to become multicellular.

Here we talk about origin of life, emergence of complexity, eukaryogenesis, how cells become multicellular? and major questions regarding how multicellularity evolves.

Guest info:

Website: https://ratclifflab.biosci.gatech.edu/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/wc_ratcliff?s=20&t=V9HDIs-TNdMJazo02F8v5Q

Google scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wdVRIS0AAAAJ&hl=en

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:50 Origin of life
00:09:02 Protocells and Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)
00:11:58 Origin of LUCA
00:14:47 Evolution of life from LUCA
00:20:35 Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes
00:27:44 Semantics of colonies, communities and multicellularity
00:38:25 Kin selection and Group selection debate
00:43:12 Reductionism in science  
00:49:32 Strong emergence
00:55:49 Snowflake yeasts
01:11:20 Multicellularity in bacteria
01:14:10 Reproduction in yeasts
01:21:11 Growth regulation in snowflake yeasts
01:27:47 Reproduction of snowflake yeasts
01:34:44 Evolutionary game theory
01:38:34 Michael Levin's work on Xenobots  01:41:56 Darwinian evolution is crucial for multicellular systems to evolve
01:47:01 How cellular functions are regulated in multicellular systems?
01:54:52 Nicole King's work on Choanoflagellates  01:57:19 Polarity in multicellular systems
01:59:32 Syncytia (Multinuclear) cells
02:04:22 Snowflake system and major questions about multicellularity  02:15:09 Reverting multicellularity
02:18:09 Thank you!