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In a new study, physicists and evolutionary biologists have shown how physical stress might have significantly advanced the evolutionary path from single-cell to multicellular organisms. In experiments with clusters of yeast cells called snowflake yeast, forces in the clusters' physical structures pushed the snowflakes to evolve.
Like the first ancestors of multicellular organisms, in this study, the snowflake yeast found itself in a conundrum: As it got bigger, physical stresses tore it into smaller pieces. In the lab, those shear forces played right into evolution’s hands, laying down a track to direct yeast evolution toward bigger, tougher snowflakes. "In just eight weeks, the snowflake yeast evolved larger, more robust bodies by figuring out soft matter physics that took humans hundreds of years to learn," said one researcher.Image credit: Georgia Tech/Yunker, Ratcliff
