Spontaneous Emergence of Multicellular Heritability

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Origin of life
• Systems biology

Background:

• Major evolutionary transitions involve the emergence of new levels of biological individuality.
• Darwinian evolution requires heritable traits, but higher-level heritability in collectives is poorly understood.
• The evolution of multicellularity presents a key challenge for understanding emergent heritability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the emergence of trait heritability during the evolution of multicellularity.
• To test predictions from analytical models in a real biological system.
• To explore the implications for major evolutionary transitions.

Main Methods:

• Analytical modeling
• Synthetic biology approaches
• Biologically-informed simulations

Main Results:

• Collective-level trait heritability emerges as soon as multicellular groups form.
• Emergent heritability at the collective level can exceed the heritability of the underlying cell-level trait.
• Key assumptions and predictions of prior analytical models are validated in an engineered biological system.

Conclusions:

• The emergence of collective-level heritability is not a late-stage event in multicellularity evolution.
• Early emergence of heritability facilitates Darwinian evolution at higher biological levels.
• Findings have significant implications for understanding major evolutionary transitions and biological individuality.