Multicellularity in animals: The potential for within-organism conflict.

ABSTRACT: Metazoans function as individual organisms but also as "colonies" of cells whose single-celled ancestors lived and reproduced independently. Insights from evolutionary biology about multicellular group formation help us understand the behavior of cells: why they cooperate, and why cooperation sometimes breaks down. Current explanations for multicellularity focus on two aspects of development which promote cooperation and limit conflict among cells: a single-cell bottleneck, which creates organisms composed of clones, and a separation of somatic and germ cell lineages, which reduces the selective advantage of cheating. However, many obligately multicellular organisms thrive with neither, creating the potential for within-organism conflict. Here, we argue that the prevalence of such organism

SUBMITTER: Howe J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9371690 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature