Max Planck researchers capture the emergence of
multicellular life in real-time experiments
All multicellular creatures are descended from single-celled
organisms. The leap from unicellularity to multicellularity is possible only if
the originally independent cells collaborate. So-called cheating cells that
exploit the cooperation of others are considered a major obstacle. Scientists
at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, together
with researchers from New Zealand and the USA, have observed in real time the
evolution of simple self-reproducing groups of cells from previously individual
cells.