Ratcliff, WC;
Fankhauser, JD;
Rogers, DW;
Greig, D;
Travisano, M;
(2015)
Origins of multicellular evolvability in snowflake yeast.
Nature Communications
, 6
, Article 6102. 10.1038/ncomms7102.
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Abstract
Complex life has arisen through a series of ‘major transitions’ in which collectives of formerly autonomous individuals evolve into a single, integrated organism. A key step in this process is the origin of higher-level evolvability, but little is known about how higher-level entities originate and gain the capacity to evolve as an individual. Here we report a single mutation that not only creates a new level of biological organization, but also potentiates higher-level evolvability. Disrupting the transcription factor ACE2 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae prevents mother-daughter cell separation, generating multicellular ‘snowflake’ yeast. Snowflake yeast develop through deterministic rules which produce geometrically-defined clusters that preclude genetic conflict and display a high broad-sense heritability for multicellular traits; as a result they are pre-adapted to multicellular adaptation. This work demonstrates that simple microevolutionary changes can have profound macroevolutionary consequences, and suggests that the formation of clonally-developing clusters may often be the first step to multicellularity.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Origins of multicellular evolvability in snowflake yeast |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/ncomms7102 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms7102 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. |
| Keywords: | Experimental evolution, Snowflake yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Individuality, Multilevel selection, Adaptation, Complexity, Evolvability |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1459200 |
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