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Multicellular Life Evolves In Months, In a Lab
ananyo writes "The origin of multicellular life, one of the most important developments in Earth's history, could have occurred with surprising speed, U.S. researchers have shown. In the lab, a single-celled yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) took less than 60 days to evolve into many-celled clusters that behaved as individuals. The clusters even developed a primitive division of labor, with some cells dying so that others could grow and reproduce. Multicellular life has evolved independently at least 25 times, but these transitions are so ancient that they have been hard to study. The researchers wanted to see if they could evolve multicellularity in a single-celled organism, using gravity as the selective pressure. In a tube of liquid, clusters of yeast cells settle at the bottom more quickly than single cells. By culturing only the cells that sank, they selected for those that stick together. After many rounds of selection over 60 days, the yeast had evolved into 'snowflakes' comprising dozens of cells."
Now a related question -- is there any evidence (for or against) that life originated more than once on earth? Is the prevailing theory that a single reproducing organism came into being, from which all others were derived, or is it more likely that multiple instances of life happened over the course of time, and they all happen to take the same form? If this is the case, then it lends credence to life existing elsewhere in the universe, with much similarity to what we know. However, if it is unlikely for more than one independent instance of life to be similar, then we should be observing various non-related life types here on earth (i.e., some carbon based, some silicon based, etc).
First. Thank you for a very interesting post which provides insight that is still understandable by those of us who are not molecular biophysicists. This is not always easy to do.
I may now be able to provide some insight into Slashdot's science discussions, which you may or may not have discovered yet....
A good scientist (which I'm sure you are) will read new research with an open mind combined with healthy scepticism. He/she won't automatically discard papers due to confirmation bias, and they won't shout "CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION" every single time they read reporting of a paper which suggests some correlation, because they realise that demonstrating correlation is often a necessary first step towards establishing causation and as such it is still novel and useful to publish papers that suggests correlation.
Slashdot, however, is home to some brilliant scientists who are completely drowned out by the masses of cynical, semi-clever "know-it-alls" who love to demonstrate their cleverness by shooting down any new research, often without bothering to read it first. They will shout "bad science" at the top of their lungs as a knee-jerk reaction to any perceived short coming, even if this short coming is just a limitation in scope of a paper or simply just ignorance on their own part. If the paper doesn't fully answer every possible question, it is worthless.