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SUMMARY:The Evolution of Multicellularity - Professor Paul Rainey (New Zea
 land)
DTSTART:20141029T150000Z
DTEND:20141029T160000Z
UID:TALK55916@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Prof George Salmond
DESCRIPTION:Cooperation is central to the emergence of multicellular life\
 , however the means by which the earliest collectives maintained integrity
  in the face of destructive cheating types is unclear. One idea posits che
 ats as a primitive germ line in a life cycle that facilitates collective r
 eproduction.  I will describe an experiment in which simple cooperating li
 neages of bacteria were propagated under a selective regime that rewarded 
 collective-level persistence.  Collectives reproduced via life cycles that
  either embraced\, or purged\, cheating types.  When embraced\, the life c
 ycle alternated between phenotypic states.  Selection fostered inception o
 f a developmental switch that underpinned the emergence of collectives who
 se fitness\, during the course of evolution\, became decoupled from the fi
 tness of constituent cells.  Such development and decoupling did not occur
  when groups reproduced via a cheat-purging regime.  I will discuss the fi
 ndings in the context of key events in the evolution of Darwinian individu
 ality during the transition from single cells to multicellular modes of ex
 istence.
LOCATION:Department of Biochemistry\, Hopkins Building\, Seminar Room 1
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