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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- 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...
So you're basically saying "Cells together strong"
Exactly. THIS is why you should join a union with your coworkers
@@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.
Alone we are each just a twig, easily snapped but together we form a mighty fagot!
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
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).
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
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.
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
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
I swear that is described in my textbook from 1993. That is not a new theory and not even a new experiment.
Citation?!? I gotta read This one!!
The title of the paper is in the video
The link to the article is in the description.
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 love PBS Eons. They're so wholesome when it comes to teaching science but they don't dumb it down.
fr
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.
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.
I let this loop like 5x so I can understand. bravo!
Multicellular organisms must be evolving on Discord.
The little wiggle of the bee feets distracted me for a second there🥹
Is that unicellular one the Chlamydomonas algae?(at least in the first diagram)
Cells with cells with cells.
Interlinked.
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?
This is so cool!
So one cell gave a amazing speach about being together is strong
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.
She is blinding me with SCIENCE!
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.
I love these short greetings from Mexico beautiful
This, folks, is why we unionize
Factorio confirmed
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.
They stood together strength in numbers we are all just part of a bigger still organism
Since the minions are shocked about this💀
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.
When Cell eats Android 17 and 18.. He became Super Cell..
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... 😒
Makes sense that multicellular life evolved earlier than a billion years. And in more than one place.
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.
Environmental pressures are literally the driving force of evolution...so yeah, makes sense this could be how multi-celled organisms came about
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.
Just the idea of scientificalexperimental evolution is so big
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
Good to know I am too big to be eaten.
But is it one organism. From the picture it looks like that multiple algea join together
Wow its like the missing link in a story I was writing
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
One cell WEAK
Two cell BIG = LESS WEAK
Many cell VERY BIG = STRONG
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.
Microscopic predators. Tiny Bill Cosbys.
how many more weeks would it take to watch the cells become a frog or a crab
So we're making our own animals now huh
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
Elephants concur. Its tough to eat tank builds.
😂so the cells joined a gang for protection.
I think we need a full video on this
Call Eric Hovind, tell him he's wrong, again.
Fifty weeks? Until this morning everything was billions of years
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.
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.
Thats my defense mechanism. Im too big to be eaten. Sharks aint gettin me
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
More cells make for a better defense. Then I remember the over crowded prisons out there.
And thus another evolution of the dinosaurs evolved after a simple science project.
Students Realizing that they have to study a new chapter💀
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
@@Drizzledrake2 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.
Predation may also explain the expansion of my belly over the years.
Funny she would mention "Too big to be eaten".
Callie u r the best ❤❤❤ if u ever come to London u should do a fan meetup
Early life: takes 3 billions years to become multicellular
These algae: git gud scrub
So they added a multicellular predator.
Thank you for not ending the video with "... And that's why- " to create that obnoxious loop effect that everyone thinks is so clever, when really it's the most unoriginal, uncreative thing, that usually makes no sense.
This badass I need more of this on my feed
Not the first time this has been done. And the cells didn't specialize like in the bee shown. They made clumps.
If these microscopic predators aren’t single celled then it doesn’t add up
being a multi celled organism is more than calls just clumping together though
So its like leveling up in Spore basically?
When do they become codependent?
Did their membranes get thicker?
Did they develop any extra layers to their membranes?
Did they develop any extra features on their membranes?
Did they develop stronger or extra cohesion methods?
This is so interesting! Hope this is further researched
As a multicellular organism, I can relate as it is hard to eat me in one bite.
The cells went: "I dare you to mess with me and my homies"
Nice we just have to repeat it a few billion more times in an uncontrolled environment and let’s see if it works again.
This ability could have just been dormant in the genetics and the environmental pressures induced those genetics to become reactivated
So basically its like a cell stage from the game spore?
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
Wow this is pretty amazing!
IMMA make some crystal creatures. If an apocalypse happens don't give me fault I warned ya
Aggregation of individuals happens at larger scales as well. Individual fish swim in schools, zebras gather in herds. Numbers become an even greater advantage when an additional structure of specialization forms a culture that lives outside the genes.
There's probably latent genes for binding together
50 weeks. So almost a year, that’s so interesting
One of the less confusing 😵💫 experiments 🧪 for the lifeforms.
Unionize!
Multicellular life develops to avoid being eaten: 🐁🐖🐐🐦🐟
Multicellular life evolving to keep eating: 🦁🐯🐺🐻🐻❄️🐊🐆🐅🦈
!!!!!! this is extremely impresive
What was trying to eat cells though. I guess other cells?
I an fascinated by how the cells chemically emerged.
This is seriously wild!
Predators: It's time for the Spartan formation!
This is fascinating
Wow! That’s fascinating!
technically 2.1 Ga old as far as we know
Question: Before this experiment, was all multi-celled life evolved from 1 multi-celled being long ago... or has the jump from single-celled to multi-celled life happened multiple times and life has likely evolved from a plethora of different 1st gen multi-celled life forms? If so, how common is this single-to-multi evolutionary leap?
Because 2 out of 5 colonies over 750 generations sounds like it might happen every Thursday.