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Organism size promotes the evolution of specialized cells in multicellular digital organisms.

ABSTRACT: Specialized cells are the essence of complex multicellular life. Fossils allow us to study the modification of specialized, multicellular features such as jaws, scales, and muscular appendages. But it is still unclear what organismal properties contributed to the transition from undifferentiated organisms, which contain only a single cell type, to multicellular organisms with specialized cells. Using digital organisms I studied this transition. My simulations show that the transition to specialized cells happens faster in organism composed of many cells than in organisms composed of few cells. Large organisms suffer less from temporarily unsuccessful evolutionary experiments with individual cells, allowing them to evolve specialized cells via evolutionary trajectories that are unavailable to smaller organisms. This demonstrates that the evolution of simple multicellular organisms which are composed of many functionally identical cells accelerates the evolution of more complex organisms with specialized cells.

SUBMITTER: Willensdorfer M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2387225 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Organism size promotes the evolution of specialized cells in multicellular digital organisms.

Willensdorfer M M

Journal of evolutionary biology 20071123 1

Specialized cells are the essence of complex multicellular life. Fossils allow us to study the modification of specialized, multicellular features such as jaws, scales, and muscular appendages. But it is still unclear what organismal properties contributed to the transition from undifferentiated organisms, which contain only a single cell type, to multicellular organisms with specialized cells. Using digital organisms I studied this transition. My simulations show that the transition to speciali ...[more]

PMID: 18036158

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Project description:Volvocine green algae represent the "evolutionary time machine" model lineage for studying multicellularity, because they encompass the whole range of evolutionary transition of multicellularity from unicellular Chlamydomonas to >500-celled Volvox. Multicellular volvocalean species including Gonium pectorale and Volvox carteri generally have several common morphological features to survive as integrated multicellular organisms such as "rotational asymmetry of cells" so that the cells become components of the individual and "cytoplasmic bridges between protoplasts in developing embryos" to maintain the species-specific form of the multicellular individual before secretion of new extracellular matrix (ECM). However, these morphological features have not been studied in the four-celled colonial volvocine species Tetrabaena socialis that is positioned in the most basal lineage within the colonial or multicellular volvocine greens. Here we established synchronous cultures of T. socialis and carried out immunofluorescence microscopic and ultrastructural observations to elucidate these two morphological attributes. Based on immunofluorescence microscopy, four cells of the mature T. socialis colony were identical in morphology but had rotational asymmetry in arrangement of microtubular rootlets and separation of basal bodies like G. pectorale and V. carteri. Ultrastructural observations clearly confirmed the presence of cytoplasmic bridges between protoplasts in developing embryos of T. socialis even after the formation of new flagella in each daughter protoplast within the parental ECM. Therefore, these two morphological attributes might have evolved in the common four-celled ancestor of the colonial volvocine algae and contributed to the further increase in cell number and complexity of the multicellular individuals of this model lineage. T. socialis is one of the simplest integrated multicellular organisms in which four identical cells constitute the individual.

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Organism size promotes the evolution of specialized cells in multicellular digital organisms.

Publications

Organism size promotes the evolution of specialized cells in multicellular digital organisms.

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