Scientists watched a single-celled organism become multicellular
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- Опубликовано: 2 мар 2023
- Scientists watched a single-celled organism evolve into a multicellular one in the lab - and they may have solved an evolutionary mystery.
Produced by Complexly for PBS Digital Studios
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References:
www.nature.com/articles/s4159... 
Развлечения
So you're basically saying "Cells together strong"
Exactly. THIS is why you should join a union with your coworkers
"TOGEDAH!!!" - Cells, many years ago
@@merfah7022Predator cells: "WE'LL DEVOUR THE VERY GODS"
@@FireheadLazzo well tbh it's also the main selling point of fascism! So idk
Ceasar has spoken.
So simple and so elegant. That means that multicellularism could still be forming today.
@SurfK9 - Yes!
It certainly could...but would likely be quickly out-competed by other, more experienced multicellular species. Ditto abiogenesis. A billion year lead time disadvantages any newcomers.
Not 'could' but is. Litteraly stated in this video. Twice!
@@JustinShaedo I guess they mean "naturally", not in a controlled lab, no need to be rude
Fun fact: yeasts originated as single celled organism who later evolved multicellularity at some point in their evolution... before losing it and evolving *back* to single celled organisms!
Survival mechanism: Get too big to be eaten…finishing off that whole bag of Oreos may save your life!
Sometimes. But don't forget Rule #1: Cardio 😂
Extra toasty cheezits and it's a deal 🤤
energy need for survival burned to digest. Be too sluggish to react :'(
Poison yourself to kill your eater is another strategy
If the bag of Oreos were bigger, would that stop you from eating it though?
Ancient cell: I'm gonna get eaten.
other cells: They can't eat all of us can they...
After becoming spoiled and callous from being protected for so long the group of ancient cells decided it could start eating groups of other ancient cells. And before you could finish saying "well that escalated quickly" the Cambrian explosion was underway.
It didn't happen for 3 billion years tho, sometimes they just eat the guy in front of you
@@arthurlobo2 Well first the first era of ingestion was the endosymbiotic stage in which cells got bigger by ingesting other cells and keeping them alive as little organelles that replicated with future generations. It was when cell size started to reach a limit that life went for groups of strongly coordinating cells with identical genomes.
Predators: yum yum more portions for us
@@brooklyna007 Wow, that's animals and stuff
When the predators don’t treat you well, sometimes you just need to band together and unionize
Sounds like communists fr
Haha awesome
@suggest_me_new_name your new name should be uninformed fascist mouth peice
@@Koyi_supremacistperfect communism works really well.
Look at ants, bees, and termites.
The problem is humans.
@@Koyi_supremacist UAW
For context: Im an evolutionary biologist studying the emergence of multicellularity in the University of Cambridge
This is a great paper, but to clear things up:
1. This is NOT the first time we observe the evolution of multicellularity in a lab (like many seem to believe in the comments)! Many other previous labs have successfully observed emergent muticellular behaviour in the past.
2. This paper does NOT "solve" the origin of multicellularity! Multicellularity has evolved independently more than 20 times in different groups and for a diversity of reasons (size advantage, collective migration, buoyancy to name a few).
What the paper actually shows:
Multicellularity can evolve in response to predation, even in a short time-span!
Is this why it did in our unicellular ancestors? Maybe, maybe not. I personaly don't believe so for reasons that dont fit here, but who knows 😅
Happy to answer any questions regarding this topic :)
if there was no multi cellular organisms then who was the predator? this discovery makes no sense , other than proving that you need life to create life
Thnx for clarification.
Some follow-up questions...
1) How do you discern between a simple colony and a multicellular organism (it's been asked here before)? In this paper (sorry, didn't read it, am writing my masters thesis, gotta research other stuff), did those cells (or organisms?) just stick together loosely or firmly?
2) Has a specialisation of cells ever been observed or induced somehow in an experiment? For example an organism which was originally uniform evolved into specialised roles, like one (upper) layer having more chlorophyll and a layer under served a bit different function, like idk, maybe transportation of resources or physical protection?
Is it possible to simulate growth of something singular celled to be a large enough organism to see with a bare eye?
Thank you thats awesome
How do we differentiate between a true multicellular organism and a colony?
With difficulty, I'd say. In biology a lot of lines are blurry, man-made constructs. I mean, we start as single cells, then another cell joins. Then we turn into multicellular organism. Where one stage ends and another starts?
Specialisation. And they're not showing that it happened. At least I don't see where.
under the microscope the colony would consist of single cells, while the mulicellular organisms would stick together, i guess?
In the end the first „multicellular“ organisms were just multiple singular Cells that stuck together. Specialization of the cells came later.
I guess a multicellular organism gives birth to multicellular babies, while a colony of single cell organisms has single cell babies. But that's just my personal guess, I'm not an expert.
Members of a colony can survive when separated from each other. Multicellular life has cells that cannot survive for long independent from each other. The other cells provide nutrients or other chemical triggers the individual cells cannot produce entirely on their own.
My mind is blown! Thank you, Eons lady!
Hey there is mostly likely a whole eons team that made this video possible!
@@nickhamilton5117 🙄
Yes, Kallie the "Eons lady " has a small team making us smarter.
She's a genius!
I read that as "my mind is brown" and got confused for a second
These guys just don't think a woman could research a short on her own without help from men. (Turn about is fair play).
Does this effectively nix multicellularization from the list of possible Great Filters in the Fermi Paradox? If multicellularity is something we can observe occurring over the last few hundred years of study, it seems like it could easily happen in the wild over geologic timespans.
Still would depend on a decent amount of factors including the sustainability of multicellular animal like cells instead of algae masses. Cause we still have algae that is single cellular that becomes significantly larger than many multi cellular life.
But it does knock that idea down a few likelyhoods.
Wasn't it Eukaryogenesis that was considered a possible Great Filter? Because I think multicellularization would typically come after that hurdle.
No, it does not. We already knew that multicellularity can evolve relatively easily in today's conditions. Eukaryotes have evolved it at least 25 times independently in the wild.
The problem is that eukaryotes seem to have existed for billions of years before first becoming multicellular. It's likely that some conditions needed to occur first (such as high enough oxygen levels) before multicellular organisms could thrive. There's also the part where something similar to a eukaryotic cell seems to be a required evolutionary step in the first place, which is probably a filter itself (but it doesn't mean multicellularity wasn't also an additional filter).
It's easy in today's conditions with cells that already have a mitochondria. It would have been a totally different story a billion years ago.
Multicellular life has evolved multiple times in existing organisms, and we knew that even before this experiment.
This is one of the most exciting discoveries I've heard of in a while; this is a huge step forward in ruling out a potential "great filter" in the rise of complex life on a planet. Makes me wonder what cause it to take 3by in the first place - Cells not complex enough? Lack of predators? No mitochondria?
@Cog Monocle
Probably was all of these.. These single cells around now have still benefited from 3.1 b yrs of evolution.. So it probably took all of those 2 b yrs to develop, random increment by random increment, to do the same.. All single cells 'working' all the problems out at the same time.. Cos of all those things you mentioned..
And that's on a planet that lots of times came so close to losing all life.. It probably is a combo of single cell to multicellular life & all the risks from whole planet extinction events, etc ( Supernovas, pulsars, Sun collisions,
no magnetosphere, needing billions of 'safe' years in the habitable zone, asteroid collisions, orbits, seasons, place in their galaxy, gravity levels etc etc)
Really interesting thinking of all the ramifications that small differences can have.. 😁🌏☮️
Yeah it was my thought as well. I would imagine the first 3by was relatively stress free for the lack of predators.
You are right in that the actual answer is no mitochondria! This video is misleading in that it implies that the development of multicellular life was a very rare / important event, but the fact that they managed to replicate it multiple times implies that, given the right selection pressures, this is actually a relatively common thing to occur - we can conclude that historically it likely happened multiple times. The likely correct answer as to why it took 2-3 billion years to go from single cells to multicellular organism is that multicellular life needs to extra energy from mitochondria to support that physiological complexity. We think the all eukaryotes (organisms with mitochondria) link back to a single extremely rare event where a one cell engulfed another, and instead of dieing, the engulfed cell lived on with the 2 developing a symbiotic relationship - eventually evolving into mitochondria. This single event was likely the "great filter" which we have never been able to replicate.
So we're down to cells evolving and self replicating proteins, for the first 3 billion years life
@@ThatBritBloke what was pressuring them? other single cells? this "discovery" seems to prove that you need scientists to create life
Also makes sense if you've research abiogenesis. How certain molecules can self organizes to form life and then that life self organizes into a larger version of itself. Then it slowly assimilates the different individual cell into one complex multicellular life.
I wonder which cell broached the subject first. "Hey buddy, I got an idea about how to deal with all these predators."
@@mayawatkins8429 Lol
The cell that started it was the "parent" cell.
what predators lol. other single cells?
@@ekklesiast exactly
Amazing study, thanks for covering it! Reckon I'm too big to be eaten too. 🤞🏼
Actual EVOLUTION in a short period of time. Show that to the deniers.
Citation?!? I gotta read This one!!
The title of the paper is in the video
The link to the article is in the description.
I also love how you see this upscale to animals who will group together for safety too. Every life has the same needs, physically and psychologically
There is no psychology going on in algae
If pressure from predators in a controlled environment was all it took, shouldn't we expect this to be a relatively common occurrence in the wild? Lots of predators there.
Perhaps it happening often in the wild, but these new, just pre-, multicellular life is being out competed by established ones with all the more complex cellular machinery.
Since there already are multicellular predators in the wild becoming big means that you leave the menu from smaller predators but enter the menu of the bigger ones. A Jaguar won't bother hunting mice but it will take a capybara for dinner.
yeah, if it was this simple, why did it take 3 billion years to happen?
It almost certainly is, however as one of the comments said before they are likely being weeded out by the already existing multicellular life. It is also happening on a natural evolutionary scale with many many other variables compared to a lab experiment. Where humans are involved and in control it is much easier to see the effects of evolution at a much faster pace than in the natural world due to the lack of other variables. That’s how we managed to make so many breeds of dog over a relatively short period of time :)
@@pckrn many many other variables such as environment involved in natural evolution. We are able to influence evolution at a much faster pace when it is a lab experiment and every variable is controlled by humans
I wish my grandfather was still alive to see all this science coming at us in this century. He was born just a few years after humanity's first flights and lived to see Armstrong step down onto the moon.
I love PBS Eons. They're so wholesome when it comes to teaching science but they don't dumb it down.
fr
Local cell too big to die
I let this loop like 5x so I can understand. bravo!
Multicellular organisms must be evolving on Discord.
We finally caught evolutionary change in 4K.
Is that unicellular one the Chlamydomonas algae?(at least in the first diagram)
This is so cool!
As a multicellular organism, I can relate as it is hard to eat me in one bite.
I swear that is described in my textbook from 1993. That is not a new theory and not even a new experiment.
Finally we can shut the creationists up once & for all when they say that we've never actually seen something evolve. 😊
I love these short greetings from Mexico beautiful
She is blinding me with SCIENCE!
And once the primitive blob was formed, it provided a starting point for them to grow and develop capillaries, nervous systems, cellular specialization etc.. What an awesome experiment, this is peak scientific research.
This, folks, is why we unionize
It's an extended misconception thinking that multicellularity emerged one billion years ago. There is evidence that it emerged independently more than 25 times (Parfrey and Lahr 2013) since 3.5 billion years ago (Grosberg and Strathmann 2007). What emerged one billion years ago is the current version of multicellularity observed in animals and plants. Besides the fact that there are different levels of complexity in multicellularity (ranging from colonies of identical cells to organisms with different cell-types), but this is another debate.
Another L for evolution deniers
this is probably the best thing I've ever seen booga
Holy crap a living Neanderthal
So one cell gave a amazing speach about being together is strong
The little wiggle of the bee feets distracted me for a second there🥹
I suspect these single cell organisms have genetic memory of being multicellular. That is, they have evolved from multicellular ancestors. That would make it much faster to switch back.
What makes you think they were ever multicellular?
@@tdawg490It took so long to evolve the first multicellular life, in spite of constant and universal pressure from predators. It feels unlikely that the same amount of evolution could be compressed into lab time.
@@letMeSayThatInIrish this was also a controlled and clean environment, we have no idea what other factors may have existed that held back life millions of years ago.
That's not really a multicellular organisms. Those have specialized cells. This is basically a bunch of unicellular organisms that happen to be sticking together. Reaching true multicellularity requires many more steps, mainly the distribution of jobs among the cells.
Like a man o' war?
@@WanderTheNomad those are made of multiple multicellular organisms. Even then there’s a partitioning of roles with specialization.
Not to mention a singular DNA sequence shared among (almost) all cells
It's a start.
They never said directly multi cell life, just structures of multi cell. It's the start.
So we're making our own animals now huh
What was the predator? I assumed for something to be a predator it’d have to be more complex, and probably multicellular
No. There are an uncountable number of single celled organisms that predate on other single celled organisms and even some multicellular ones.
Well, predation from multicellular predators could not possibly predate the evolution of multicellular life, right?
@@Bogwedgle ah thanks, that’s interesting to know!
@@j_fley6702 right, which is why I was surprised. I had assumed predation came after multicellular evolution, so this video was a shock to me.
Well, the predator in the experiment was an animal (multicellular) and more specifically a rotifer, but, there are plenty of unicellular predators out there who eat other single cells, just look up Cilliates, there are lots of wonderful things about them and other unicellular organisms.
The initial statement is like telling an 80 year old "the last 20 years of your life are recent." Not sure they would agree.
Yes, one quarter of the entire lifetime of the planet seems like a pretty long time to me.
This says life is stronger together than alone
Cells with cells with cells.
Interlinked.
Imagine telling someone a couple hundred years ago what were doing today, they’d think we were gods-oh we made an organism evolve to multi cellular, we can fairly freely edit and create new dna, and our societies biggest question is what temperature we want to make the earth
If only destroying the earth wasn't cost effective -_-
Like being paid to relive yourself in your living room... 😒
Is there a paper on this study?
I'm going to say yes. Screenshot shows "Matthew D. Herron et al.", so that's likely the researcher who did this.
“De Novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation” It gives the paper in the video
Environmental pressures are literally the driving force of evolution...so yeah, makes sense this could be how multi-celled organisms came about
When Cell eats Android 17 and 18.. He became Super Cell..
There is a newer cancer theory that we should also be using selection pressures to fight cancer instead of just chemicals
but that's more of a cell colony than one unified multicellular organism. How could they differentiate cell types or come up with body plans?
Just wait a couple of million years
Since the minions are shocked about this💀
Factorio confirmed
But is it one organism. From the picture it looks like that multiple algea join together
Could they also have clumped together for protection from oxygen during the great oxygen catastrophe? This would have reduced their surface area and given them more control over what they let in.
Good to know I am too big to be eaten.
Thank you. The graphics and brief discussion are very informative to an average person.
Pretty neat, but considering that the genes and proteins involved with sticking together for longer after division are possibly small and can be achieved through a single mutation in cell adhesion molecules. This would probably not add to the species survival probability in many other scenarios
I don't understand, I am sure that the algae is predated upon in nature, so shouldn't all singular cell algae eventually evolve into a multicellular form given even just a few (1000 ish) generations since it appears the evolutionary pressure to do so is so high?
No if enough single cell algae survive those will keep reproducing and we will consider those algae. Others we spot we may simply think is another new species.
Predation isn't a constant. Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less, sometimes what the predators are changes, and so on. Same applies to your defenses against predation (becoming multicellular isn't the only way to defend against predators). And any adaptation an organism could gain has pros and cons. So what's beneficial to evolve changes based on your environment. In a natural environment, the cons of multicellularity probably outweigh the pros a lot of the time. But in this artificial lab environment where scientists forced the algae to survive a high amount of introduced predators, becoming multicellular suddenly became very worth it.
@@evans7771 how do they know then that this is a new species and not just a form the algae is able to take when under a certain amount and type of stress?
@@timothymimeslayer you’re asking the right questions. You won’t get an answer because it’s not convenient enough to consider
@Ethan Patel I am sure they did some kind of DNA sequencing but that wasn't addressed in the video
Great experiment! Thanks for sharing.
They stood together strength in numbers we are all just part of a bigger still organism
Crazy that we may have gotten here on the concept of “ be big, be not eaten”
Makes sense that multicellular life evolved earlier than a billion years. And in more than one place.
Basically the scientist announced to the cells : "OBJECTIVE : SURVIVE"
OMG THIS IS AWESOME!!!
😂so the cells joined a gang for protection.
Cells together stronk together
Call Eric Hovind, tell him he's wrong, again.
So over billions of years, evolving to multicellular took ONE.
Many, many, many, of multicellular organisms died out as do most organisms, the ones which are our ancestors now we're the most successful ones. It took a billion years to perfect it.
That's true, I was 1 of the 1st to see it happening around 1 billion years ago
I remember it like it was yesterday
That is pretty cool. Thanks for that.
I always wondered if cells began to work together for one reason or another and by extension I'm not a human but ather a collection of single celled organisms in a human shaped city state built to ensure that the collective can live on. And then we invented Cheetos and Alcohol because some cells just want chaos.
Just the idea of scientificalexperimental evolution is so big
So basically its like a cell stage from the game spore?
Are the individual algae cells sharing any resources or using any for of chemical signaling? or is this more just a clumping of the cells?
And thus another evolution of the dinosaurs evolved after a simple science project.
I think we need a full video on this
Wow its like the missing link in a story I was writing
Thats my defense mechanism. Im too big to be eaten. Sharks aint gettin me
How is this not EVERYWHERE in the newss
Because evolution is scary and upsets about 72million Americans.
Microscopic predators. Tiny Bill Cosbys.
This *is* wild. I thought something like this would be kind of big news.
It’s actually been researched and backed up and multiple tests done since about 2007
@@greg5145 That is crazy. I really wish science news were important in our society.
@@iamjimgroth yeahhhh, welcome to religion.
@@iamjimgrothyeah religion makes sure that doesn't happen though
@@Lockpickingturtle85 I'm not sure religion is responsible for that. It's more of an excuse for the ones who use it to control the masses.
Either way, it *is* a problem.
I wonder if, when pressure from predators is relaxed, the surviving organisms fell apart into single celled organisms again. If it truly is evolution (as opposed to changing behavior based on environment), it should not be reversible.... Changing behavior is seen everywhere.
If the only benefit is against predators and it's a disadvantage on everything else then yes.
You can perfectly devolve changes, look at kiwis.
Students Realizing that they have to study a new chapter💀
And now I have to get up in the morning. Screw you, predators
Fifty weeks? Until this morning everything was billions of years
Elephants concur. Its tough to eat tank builds.
i’m obsessed with your sweater
Makes you wonder how many times multicellular organisms evolved.
This badass I need more of this on my feed
Think about this. The looming threat and promise of death is what fuels life to advance into more complex stages. If there was no such thing as death, there couldn’t be life. Things would remain stagnant until the end of time.
True but you are thinking like it’s a mentality when rather it was physical conditions
Early life: takes 3 billions years to become multicellular
These algae: git gud scrub
Occam's razor at its finest.
This is so interesting! Hope this is further researched
3 billion years of single-celled organism and then this little change makes all of this is insane
Pretty sure that is a colony of a single cellular organisms.
So they added a multicellular predator.
The cells went: "I dare you to mess with me and my homies"
Wow this is pretty amazing!
This is seriously wild!
Nice we just have to repeat it a few billion more times in an uncontrolled environment and let’s see if it works again.
Earth : 4.5 B years
Uni cell life : 3.7 B years
Multi cell life : 2.1 B years
Fundi Christians: 6k years
@@basedgamerguy818 bozo