Comments on: Yeast Can Evolve into Multicellular Organisms in a Few Short Months

By: Taissir N.

Taissir N. — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 05:06:25 +0000

I have read that fungi transforms from unicellular to multicellular. Is it the case in cancer but reversed: where multicellulr transforms into unicellular.

{ Genetic mechanics
First-ever 3-D images of DNA damage sensor created at Harvard
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/02/genetic-mechanics/?fb_ref=sidebar

I believe, some lower organisms transforms into another stage of life (or life form) under certain conditions including environmental (cellular, inter-cellular, soundings) stresses. }

By: Taissir N.

Taissir N. — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:58:54 +0000

I have read that fungi transforms from unicellular to multicellular. Is it the case in cancer but reversed: where multicellulr transforms into unicellular.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:32:26 +0000

Wooh, hooray for yeast!

By: leah

leah — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 02:47:09 +0000

if yeast is that dangerous, how bout the milk?

By: Marcos

Marcos — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:28:19 +0000

thats why yeast is dangerous if it expires

By: Dee Thibodeau

Dee Thibodeau — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:25:09 +0000

Interesting article. Neil Blackstone points out that yeast may have never lost multicellular ancestry, and suggest that these yeast simply activated a vestigial ability to become multicelllular, rather than evolving into something entirely new. I read that scientists at the University of Minnesota (where the study originated) are planning to repeat their experiments with Chlamydomonas, another single-celled organism with no multicellular ancestry. I’m very interested to hear the results of that study.

By: Gary Breitenbach

Gary Breitenbach — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 05:36:01 +0000

thesubject matterand

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:39:21 +0000

I don’t understand why clumps of cells would sink and single cells would float. The number of cells doesn’t indicate a change in density.

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:36:59 +0000

Here’s a fix for the sponge link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/08/06/pocket-science-%E2%80%93-lessons-from-spongy-genomes-and-a-deadly-bat-killing-disease/

Kudos to Dunc for a great comment.

By: m

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 05:19:06 +0000

The single cell, is very smart. Its doesnt want to do all the work itself when its friends can help. Id say the single cell needs to have a revised description that includes like to be socialable.

By: Dunc

Dunc — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:06:22 +0000

Also, it rather depends on which strain of s. cerevisiae they used – we brewers have been (largely unconsciously) selecting for flocculation (clumping together) in yeast for centuries. It’s not necessarily entirely true that they’re strictly single-celled organisms – a phenomenon called “chaining”, whereby daughter cells remain attached to the parent to form long chains of cells (as distinct from “proper” flocculation, which is when formerly separate cells stick together to form clumps), is quite common in many brewery strains.

Apoptosis is interesting though… Yeast is a fascinating wee beastie. :)

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 23:17:32 +0000

Even if yeast has the basic toolkit, it is interesting that so little can resurrect it.

It may indeed take going way back in the tree to make a more interesting test. Already D. discoideum slime molds have evolved a structure analogous to the organized tissue of epithelium in spore stalks. (I.e. a polarized cell layer around an extracellular matrix of cellulose and proteins.)

And interestingly slime molds used some of the same proteins, for anchoring and orienting the cells in this fruiting body tissue, that was earlier discovered in sponges. (That themselves don’t produce epithelial analogs AFAIU, but descendants animals do.) [Dickinson et al, Science, March 11, 2011.]

Btw, that sponge link doesn’t work.

the first time may have been more than 2 billion years ago

For the record on that truly isolated observation, you yourself published some criticism in another blog post. Or as paleontologist Chris Nedin says:

“2.1 Ga Multicellular Colonial Organisms – Umm, Not”.

I think he rather conclusively, and with great example images, shows that bacterial mats may give all of the same remains. (And a pair of paleontologists jump in with “been there, done that” in the comments: “we’ve seen similar things abundantly in a deposit with early pyritisation from Wales”.)