A close unicellular relative reveals aggregative multicellularity was key to the evolution of animals.

ABSTRACT: How animals evolved complex multicellularity from their unicellular ancestors remains unanswered. Unicellular relatives of animals exhibit simple multicellularity through clonal division, formation of multinucleate coenocytes, or aggregation.¹ Therefore, animal multicellularity may have evolved from one (or a combination) of these behaviours. Aggregation has classically been dismissed as a means to complex multicellularity.² However, aggregation occurs in many extant animal cells and has also been recently described in three different unicellular relatives of animals (the choanoflagellates Salpingoeca rosetta and Choanoeca flexa, and the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki).^3-6 It is unclear whether aggregation in these species is derived

SUBMITTER: Li R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12132279 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature