Flows driven by flagella of multicellular organisms enhance long-range molecular transport

Evolution from unicellular organisms to larger multicellular ones requires matching their needs to the rate of exchange of molecular nutrients with the environment. This logistic problem poses a severe constraint on development. For organisms whose body plan is a spherical shell, such as the volvocine green algae, the current (molecules per second) of needed nutrients grows quadratically with radius, whereas the rate at which diffusion alone exchanges molecules grows linearly, leading to a bottleneck radius beyond which the diffusive current cannot meet metabolic demands. By using Volvox carteri, we examine the role that advection of fluid by the coordinated beating of surface-mounted flagella plays in enhancing nutrient uptake and show that it generates a boundary layer of concentration of the diffusing solute. That concentration gradient produces an exchange rate that is quadratic in the radius, as required, thus circumventing the bottleneck and facilitating evolutionary transitions to multicellularity and germ-soma differentiation in the volvocalean green algae.