Comments on: Evolving Bodies: My new story in tomorrow’s New York Times

By: Ford

Ford — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:41:08 +0000

John Kubie,

One issue with large cells is that voltage differences across cell membranes are key to cell energy metabolism. Large cells have less membrane area relative to their volume. See Lane and Martin (2010) paper in Nature, my discussion in blog post below, and comments on that post from Mark Reichert, who mentions giant Epulopiscium cells.

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/denis036/thisweekinevolution/2011/01/how_inevitable_was_the_origin.html

By: John Kubie

John Kubie — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:51:19 +0000

I guess if you want to get big, growing big cells doesn’t work very well. Curious to why large single cells with complex cytoskeletons and specialized sub-regions never occur. Or have they?

By: Marlene Zuk

Marlene Zuk — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:49:33 +0000

Fabulous stuff, and I am not just saying this because I’m going to be joining the authors’ department at the U of Minnesota in the spring! And Will says he had a blast talking to you, Carl.

By: BJM

BJM — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:54:18 +0000

Brewing and ethanol industry scientists have been developing highly flocculating yeast stains for many years. These are brewers rather than bakers yeasts but I wonder how the most highly flocculating strains they have developed compare to those in this study.

[CZ: This multicellularity is different from flocculation.]

By: Becky Ward

Becky Ward — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:20:23 +0000

Very interesting. Our understanding of the evolution of multicellularity also has implications for the way we understand the evolution of sex: see http://ittakes30.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/rewriting-the-history-of-sex/.