How multicellularity evolves

Biology, Physics, Chemistry. 23/09/10

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This episode is with William Ratcliff. He is an Associate Professor at the School of Biological Science at Georgia Tech. Will studies the physics that constrains multicellular structures and examines the minute changes in certain yeast cells that allows them to become multicellular.

Here we talk about origin of life, emergence of complexity, eukaryogenesis, how cells become multicellular? and major questions regarding how multicellularity evolves.

About the guest

  • 00:00:00 Introduction

  • 00:00:50 Origin of life

  • 00:09:02 Protocells and Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)

  • 00:11:58 Origin of LUCA

  • 00:14:47 Evolution of life from LUCA

  • 00:20:35 Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes

  • 00:27:44 Semantics of colonies, communities and multicellularity

  • 00:38:25 Kin selection and Group selection debate

  • 00:43:12 Reductionism in science

  • 00:49:32 Strong emergence

  • 00:55:49 Snowflake yeasts

  • 01:11:20 Multicellularity in bacteria

  • 01:14:10 Reproduction in yeasts

  • 01:21:11 Growth regulation in snowflake yeasts

  • 01:27:47 Reproduction of snowflake yeasts

  • 01:34:44 Evolutionary game theory

  • 01:38:34 Michael Levin's work on Xenobots

  • 01:41:56 Darwinian evolution is crucial for multicellular systems to evolve

  • 01:47:01 How cellular functions are regulated in multicellular systems?

  • 01:54:52 Nicole King's work on Choanoflagellates

  • 01:57:19 Polarity in multicellular systems

  • 01:59:32 Syncytia (Multinuclear) cells 0

  • 2:04:22 Snowflake system and major questions about multicellularity

  • 02:15:09 Reverting multicellularity

  • 02:18:09 Thank you!

Timestamps