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A Sourcebook for the Worldwide Discovery of a Creative Organic Universe
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V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An Earthtwinian Genesis Synthesis

4. Multicellular Fauna and Flora Organisms in Transition

Bogdan, Paul, et al. Heterogeneous Structure of Stem Cells Dynamics. Nature Scientific Reports. 4/4826, 2014. Researchers from the University of Southern California, University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University note that after years of study, stem cells, “defined as unspecialized cell that can self-renew and give rise to differentiated cell types during embryogenesis, and in the adult, during tissue homeostasis or injury repair,” are still not well understood. To resolve, a new approach via complex systems science is enlisted. Stem cell populations are seen to form non-random collective sub-states which take on a fractal self-similarity. By this approach, a mathematical, quantitative model of better predictive value can be achieved. Although not cited, these patterns are also akin to microbial colonies. And from the quote, might we imagine all told a mutual “correlative cosmology”?

The fractal behavior we observe in stem cell DTs (Division Time) identifies a stochastic process that displays a probability density function that is self-similar in nature, i.e., the distribution of cell DTs at one scale can be retrieved from that of another scale by using the fractal dimension and a scaling coefficient. Simply speaking, the existence of fractal statistics in stem cell DTs implies that the birth of a new cell is not a random (i.e., uncorrelated) event from the development of previous ones. In other words, there is some form of correlation between cell divisions and this leads to a complex behavior which cannot be quantified by current mathematical models of stem cell growth. (9)

Bonner, John. First Signals. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. A veteran biologist reviews his decades of inquiry into the appearance of multicellular and communal complexity. In so doing, strong parallels are found between the stages of organic development and animal behavior.

Bonner, John. Perspective: The Size-Complexity Rule. Evolution. 58/9, 2004. The Princeton biologist and author finds a steady increase in the number of cell types and divisions of labor with larger bodily size. This relation holds from small algae to animals, plants and even for human societies.

Bozdag, Ozan, et al. De Novo Evolution of Macroscopic Multicellularity. Nature. May 10, 2023. Nine Georgia Tech systems biologists including William Ratcliff continue their Institute project as conveyed in The Evolution of Multicellularity edition (Herron herein) by citing further instances of life’s emergent persistence to attain more complex, viable, integrative organismic forms.

While early lineages started as simple cells, much less is known about how they became Darwinian entities capable of sustained evolution. Here we investigate these precursors within a long-term experiment so as to select for larger group sizes. Our model is the snowflake yeast model system, which after many runs, in an anaerobic mode evolved to macroscopic complexities which are more biophysically tough. Altogether, this research provides unique insights into life’s ongoing evolutionary transitions in individuality, whence simpler phases overcome biophysical limitations through multicellular advances.

Brunet, Thibaut and Nicole King. The Origin of Animal Multicellularity and Cell Differentiation. Developmental Cell. 43/2, 2017. By way of several graphic displays UC Berkeley biologists advance hyper-quantifications of life’s evolutionary to join simpler, diverse, reciprocal entities into viable, complex, holobiont organisms.

Over 600 million years ago, animals evolved from a unicellular or colonial organism whose cell(s) captured bacteria with a collar complex, a flagellum surrounded by a microvillar collar. Using principles from evolutionary cell biology, we reason that the transition to multicellularity required modification of pre-existing mechanisms for extracellular matrix synthesis and cytokinesis. We discuss two hypotheses for the origin of animal cell types: division of labor from ancient plurifunctional cells and conversion of temporally alternating phenotypes into spatially juxtaposed cell types. (Abstract)

Brusalte, Stephen and Zhe-Xi Luo. Ascent of the Mammals. Scientific American. May, 2016. University of Edinburgh and University of Chicago paleontologists relate new evidence about how pervasive and robust was the evolutionary appearance of marsupial and placental organisms, even before the asteroid did in the dinosaurs. As another example of the 21st century transition to worldwide scientific progress, it is said that in the past 15 years a burst of findings has fleshed out a train of creatures “from shrew to you.” And while viewing this two page spread, one wonders what global cognizant entity has now emerged that is moved and able to so reconstruct from whence it came. What kind of universe seems to require and be able to achieve its own self-reconstruction, witness, and new intentional creation?

Butterfield, Nicholas. Animals and the Invention of the Phanerozoic Earth System. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 26/2, 2011. A Cambridge University scientist offers a novel insight as to how this era which covers the whole time since the Cambrian period some 540 mya to date has been largely affected by the presence of creaturely species. As multicellular organisms dubbed “pelagic eumetazoa” rose to upper seas levels and land living they became “ecosystems engineers” for all manner of niches, along with a major effects on the biosphere.

Animals do not just occupy the modern biosphere, they permeate its structure and define how it works. Their unique combination of organ-grade multicellularity, motility and heterotrophic habit makes them powerful geobiological agents, imposing myriad feedbacks on nutrient cycling, productivity and environment. Most significantly, animals have ‘engineered’ the biosphere over evolutionary time, forcing the diversification of, for example, phytoplankton, land plants, trophic structure, large body size, bioturbation, biomineralization and indeed the evolutionary process itself. This review surveys how animals contribute to the modern world and provides a basis for reconstructing ancient ecosystems. Earlier, less animal-influenced biospheres worked quite differently from the one currently occupied, with the Ediacaran–Cambrian radiation of organ-grade animals marking a fundamental shift in macroecological and macroevolutionary expression. (Abstract)

Celiker, Hasan and Jeff Gore. Cellular Cooperation: Insights from Microbes. Trends in Cell Biology. 23/1, 2012. MIT biophysicists Celiker, a Turkish-American graduate student, and Gore, an assistant professor and director of the MIT Evolutionary Systems Biology Laboratory offer a sophisticated quantification from a bacterial basis of how life consistently evolves and forms by a balance of diversity and unity toward more complex organisms. And so many of these reports beg an independent genetic-like source that so informs and is manifest in these nested iterations. See also by the authors “Competition between Species can Stabilize Public-Goods Cooperation within a Species” in Molecular Systems Biology (8/621, 2012).

Cooperation between cells is a widespread phenomenon in nature, found across diverse systems ranging from microbial populations to multicellular organisms. For cooperation to evolve and be maintained within a population of cells, costs due to competition have to be outweighed by the benefits gained through cooperative actions. Because cooperation generally confers a cost to the cooperating cells, defector cells that do not cooperate but reap the benefits of cooperation can thrive and eventually drive the cooperating phenotypes to extinction. Here we summarize recent advances made in understanding how cooperation and multicellularity can evolve in microbial populations in the face of such conflicts and discuss parallels with cell populations within multicellular organisms. (Abstract)

Evolution of Multicellularity Cooperation has played a key role in the major transitions in natural history, one of which is the evolution of multicellularity. A multicellular organism is by definition an aggregate of genetically identical cells that remain spatially associated after cell division. In a multicellular organism, generally only a portion of the cells can reproduce, whereas the rest maintain homeostasis of the population or facilitate the success of the reproductive cells. This high degree of cooperativity and differentiation between cells is one of the most striking features of multicellular life. (11)

Chen, Zhanqi, et al. Prolonged Milk Provisioning in a Jumping Spider. Science. 362/1052, 2018. In a paper which received popular notice, ten zoologists and botanists in China report for the first time that even insect species possess and this prime maternal attribute of vertebrate mammals. In regard, evolutionary life seems to hold to a common physiology, anatomy and behavioral repertoire which is then availed and repeated in creaturely kind.

Lactation is a mammalian attribute, and the few known nonmammal examples have distinctly different modalities. We document here milk provisioning in a jumping spider, which compares functionally and behaviorally to lactation in mammals. The spiderlings ingest nutritious milk droplets secreted from the mother’s epigastric furrow until the subadult stage. Maternal care, as for some long-lived vertebrates, continues after the offspring reach maturity. These findings demonstrate that mammal-like milk provisioning and parental care for sexually mature offspring have also evolved in invertebrates, encouraging a reevaluation of their occurrence across the animal kingdom, especially in invertebrates. (Abstract)

Conway Morris, Simon. Evolution: Bringing Molecules into the Fold. Cell. 100/1, 2000. The Cambridge paleontologist on convergent pathways in genetic networks, neural mechanisms and fish echolocation.

Cooper, Rory, et al. An Ancient Turing-like Patterning Mechanism Regulates Skin Denticle Development in Sharks. Science Advances. 4/11, 2018. We cite this paper by University of Sheffield, Oxford and Florida biologists as another current finding that natural evolution seems to avail an independent mathematical source code which then appears in exemplary, recurrent effect across the anatomy and physiology of Metazoan creaturely kingdoms.

Vertebrates have a vast array of epithelial appendages, including scales, feathers, and hair. The developmental patterning of these diverse structures can be theoretically explained by Alan Turing’s reaction-diffusion system. However, the role of this system in epithelial appendage patterning of early diverging lineages such as the cartilaginous fishes is poorly understood.. We demonstrate through simulation models that a Turing-like mechanism can explain shark denticle patterning. This mechanism bears remarkable similarity to avian feather patterning, suggesting deep homology of the system. We propose that a diverse range of vertebrate appendages, from shark denticles to avian feathers and mammalian hair, use this ancient and conserved system. (Abstract)

Crockett, William, et al.. Physical constraints during Snowball Earth drive the evolution of multicellularity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. June, 2024. With regard to this major biological transition event, WC, MIT, Jack Shaw and Chris Kempes, Sante Fe Institute and Carl Simpson, University of Colorado factor in a global environmental influence which they say impelled microorganisms to band together for sheer survival. As the quotes advise, in retrospect as the whole scenario becomes filled in and fleshed out it does seem to reveal an innate, sequential drive and direction across life’s stratified emergence. See also Experimental Snowball Earth Viscosity Drives the Evolution of Motile Multicellularity by Andrea Halling, et al in bioRxiv (February 8, 2024).

Molecular and fossil evidence suggests that complex eukaryotic multicellularity evolved during the late Neoproterozoic era, coincident with Snowball Earth glaciations, where ice sheets covered most of the globe. During this period, environmental conditions were extreme with significant effects on resource availability and optimal phenotypes. By testing novel hypotheses, we show how multicellularity was likely acquired differently in eukaryotes and prokaryotes owing the biophysical and metabolic regimes they inhabit. These results suggest that adverse conditions during Snowball Earth glaciations gave multicellular eukaryotes an evolutionary advantage, paving the way for the complex organism lineages that followed. (Excerpt)

Each new level of life’s organization can be associated with an event in evolutionary history that changed the state of the evolutionary game. By adding a new hierarchical level to the organization of organisms, these major transitions in individuality added new niches to the ecosystem (e.g. trophic) and introduced new phenotypes. Such transitions include the origin of cells, eukaryotes, multicellularity, and colonial and social organisms. (1)

While each of these features plays an important role in differentiating eukaryotic and prokaryotic multicellularity, none provides a definitive answer for the 1.5 billion year gap between eukaryogenesis and the emergence of complex multicellular lineages. The Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth glacial events provide an environmental driver that our models show would have selected for multicellular morphologies during this time period, helping explain the lag between eukaryogenesis and the proliferation of complex multicellularity. (9)

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