What’s the News: We walking, talking agglomerations of cells have always thought of multicellular life as a profound jump in evolution. The first organisms were just single cells, but at some point, they began to work together for the good of the whole, divvying up tasks like nutrient transport and cellular messaging.  Eventually, these colonies became the complex multicellular life that we know and love.

But maybe being multicellular isn’t as difficult to achieve as we thought. Scientists presenting at the Society for the Study of Evolution conference have, over just a couple months, gotten single-celled yeast to grow into colonies that function as multicellular organisms.

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The yeast that causes thrush–an infection of the mouth and tongue–can reproduce homosexually, offering a clue as to why the yeast-caused infection can be so difficult to treat.

When mating, the yeast known as Candida albicans can take one of two sexes: a or alpha. When researchers mixed the two types of yeast, they found that yeast cells of the same sex mated, although not very often, according to the study published in Nature. And they increased this homosexual mingling by boost[ing] a pheromone secreted by “a” cells that draws same-sex cells together [New Scientist]..

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