• Scientists have experimentally proved the ease with which initial evolution from unicellular to multicellular life had taken place.
  • "The first crucial steps in the transition can take place remarkably quickly under an appropriate selective condition,” the scientists write in their paper published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • In this case, the scientists used gravity as a selection pressure as it was easy to observe, study and replicate in a lab using test tubes.
  • The proof that the clusters were formed by the division of individual cells came through 16 hours of microscopic examination for growth. Cells taken from the clusters proved their hallmark characteristic — each cell giving “rise to a new snowflake-like cluster".
  • Cells did not divide at random. While cells in the juvenile stage grew rapidly to multiple cells, and hence helped in increasing the size of the cluster, the fully-grown adult stage was marked by division of the matured cells into daughter cells. The presence of both juvenile and adult stages is a mark of true multicellularity.
 
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