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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Science Life Happens Naturally

Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 8:47 AM

More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multicellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. Just how that happened is a question that has eluded evolutionary biologists.

But scientists in the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences have replicated that key step in the laboratory using natural selection and common brewer's yeast, which are single-celled organisms. The yeast "evolved" into multicellular clusters that work together cooperatively, reproduce and adapt to their environment — in essence, precursors to life on Earth as it is today.

The more we look at life, the more it's only a matter of time (lots of it) and place (a habitable zone). This makes life even more marvelous than anything we could ever imagine. It really is what matter does when the conditions are right in the right universe.

"To understand why the world is full of plants and animals, including humans, we need to know how one-celled organisms made the switch to living as a group, as multicelled organisms," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Environmental Biology. "This study is the first to experimentally observe that transition, providing a look at an event that took place hundreds of millions of years ago."

Comments (11) RSS

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Very cool. Won't matter to the IDers, of course, but cool nonetheless.

Posted by NateMan on January 18, 2012 at 9:10 AM

Very cool indeed.

And now I'm inspired to make some sourdough bread. Mm, delicious life.

Posted by Zuulabelle

on January 18, 2012 at 9:41 AM

It is interesting that it's been done in the lab. But why would star stuff do this? Is there a common goal across the universe?

Posted by Vince on January 18, 2012 at 10:48 AM

notice the subtle push for the collectivists version of I.D. where they bury survival of the fittest in favor of a cooperative nature fairy tale. Their goal is similar to the IDers; overpopulate and flood the system to the benefit of the 1%; global enslavement.

Posted by bluer is better on January 18, 2012 at 11:00 AM

@ 4, do they tug at their waxed mustaches and laugh maniacally when making these plans?

Posted by Matt from Denver on January 18, 2012 at 12:33 PM

This article pisses me off in two major ways:
-It neglects the fact that many fungi are also multicellular.
-It refers to artificial selection as "natural selection".
I'm growing more and more skeptical of the credentials of the people who write Science Daily. Charles, have you considered switching to a somewhat more technical magazine such as Scientific American or Discover?

Posted by venomlash on January 18, 2012 at 1:01 PM

Scanned the article. The coolest part that caught my eye was that the cells in the clusters began primitive differentiation.

@3: Natural selection is without goal or direction. It's simply a thing that happens. Like waves pounding the shore.
@6: And yeast IS life as we know it today!

FWIW, the original in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/0…

Posted by aureolaborealis on January 18, 2012 at 1:36 PM

@7 I have considered that many times. It just is. A part of the whole. It seems so unsatisfying to me.

Posted by Vince on January 18, 2012 at 2:08 PM

@7 So why the tendency toward complexity?

Posted by Cynic Romantic on January 18, 2012 at 9:39 PM

@9: We don't notice the less-complex things in the biosphere. There's a ridiculous diversity of unicellular prokaryotic life, but we can't see it due to size and habitat, so we know relatively little about it.

Posted by venomlash on January 19, 2012 at 12:23 AM