Metabolically-driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast.

ABSTRACT: The ecological and evolutionary success of multicellular lineages is due in no small part to their increased size relative to unicellular ancestors. However, large size also poses biophysical challenges, especially regarding the transport of nutrients to all cells; these constraints are typically overcome through multicellular innovations (e.g., a circulatory system). Here we show that an emergent biophysical mechanism - spontaneous fluid flows arising from metabolically-generated density gradients - can alleviate constraints on nutrient transport, enabling exponential growth in nascent multicellular clusters of yeast lacking any multicellular adaptations for nutrient transport or fluid flow. Surprisingly, beyond a threshold size, the metabolic activity of experimentally-evolved snowflake

SUBMITTER: Narayanasamy N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11213004 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature