lol, who is it that says this?

There's nothing wrong with creating conditions to find scientific truth. Of course they're looking for evolution.
Whether it's the search for evolution, sun spots or ice cores, the search for scientific truth is the same.

To figure out how things work.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Mutations are not evolution. They are the source of new variation and alleles upon which evolution can act via selection or genetic drift. Evolution is change in allele frequencies not origin of new alleles. This was a study on selection and many here are missing that point. The authors fully acknowledge this was not likely new mutations. The pressure of selection via predation caused new strains to become obligately multicellular. This is likely due to new allele combinations but one does have to wonder if heritable changes to expression were also involved (i.e. epigenetics).

"The ability of wild-type C. reinhardtii to form palmelloids suggests that the founding population in our experiment already possessed a toolkit for producing multicellular structures. However, while the palmelloid condition is expressed facultatively in wild-type C. reinhardtii, the strains that evolved in our experiment are obligately multicellular. Like palmelloids, our evolved multicellular isolates lack motility, suggesting that the ability to express both unicellular and multicellular phenotypes may be optimal when predation pressure varies over time31."

So, in short, they were simply doing what they had already been programmed to do?

Not to pile on with krpind, but there are fossil examples of gradual change in single lineages producing new characteristics that are described as new species. See Contusotruncana shell conicity. A major part of that is origin of new variation which occurs over time in all lineages due to mutations. For example blue eye alleles are a mutation of brown eye alleles IIRC, and all individuals with blue eyed alleles share a common ancestor that had that mutation. So selection is patently not operating on less and less, it is tautological that the opposite is true based on our understanding of how mutations (both large and small) occur. And that isn't even digging into horizontal transfer.

One does not have to rely on the fossil record to see new species. Here is a brand new species of animal that occurred overnight via hybridization in a sympatric process in the past few decades. It has a new form, and is reproductively isolated. It can't be argued that this is not a new species, in spite of the fact that no new genes had to evolve for it to speciate. And it can't be argued that this species existed in the past, it is newly formed. And even better, it is a new member of the Darwin finches, fully backing his assessment of an adaptive radiation on the islands.

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/11/27/study-darwins-finches-reveals-new-species-can-develop-little-two-generations

I thought this was another AOC thread.

No. In short they have the genetic variation to become multicellular. So the transition from unicellular to multicellular could become fixed in this lineage given the right selective pressures. I.e. they have the flexibility to change, as all organisms due, to adapt to changes in the environment. You seem to be assuming that their ancestors have always had this flexibility, but that isn't supported. Ancestral lineages of eukaryotes were all unicellular at one time. Phyllogenetic reconstructions indicate clearly that multicellularity has arisen independently as a permanent feature of at least six different major lineages from unicellular ancestral types. This includes in the animal kingdom, in the green algae (which gave rise to plants), in the fungi (multiple times) and in the stramenoplies (e.g. kelp). This is an underestimate considering other protist groups, and it may be up to twenty times. It is a short term demonstration that is actually mostly trying to demonstrate what pressure drives the transition.

A single celled organism evolving into a multi cellular(more complex lifeform) is not the same as a bunch of cells banding together.

lol, if only I were the one to have defined and characterized these processes. My honorarium for posting here would be through the roof.

Bullshit

Pretty cool
so much still to be discovered

"They have the genetic variation" is just another way of saying they were programmed to act this way under these conditions.

"Phyllogenetic reconstruction" is wild speculation based in assumption.

This "study" has absolutely nothing to do with evolution. All they've shown is that single celled algae can clump together if threatened, and they're making the wild assumption that that could someday evolve into a multicellular organism.

It's just more circular reasoning. Basically what they're saying is that these colonies could someday evolve into a multicellular organism because we assume that it happened in the past. This is only evidence of anything other than genetic design if you're already going from the assumption that single celled organisms evolved into multicellular ones.

ETA: And at least the article is an outright lie. All it's showing is a colonial organism, not a multicellular one. I don't know if the scientists themselves made that claim in their original paper, but they're hacks and charlatans if they did. Single celled organisms forming colonies as a survival mechanism, under certain conditions, is well documented.

Sometimes, I think the Dark Ages would have been very popular here.

Yes.
There's definitely nothing wrong with that.
We can only be in and represent ourselves and our work from two places.
Inside, or outside of the box.
The final decision is ours.

I personally believe in intelligent design but it is possible that many unique things happened in earth's primordial stage that produced life here.

The question we don't know the answer to is do those conditions exist elsewhere in the universe?  If they do is it rare or common?

We won't know the answer to that until we find life elsewhere.  That may never happen.

If we could create life in a lab from scratch then that would tell us that it is possible elsewhere but that still doesn't answer the question of if it happen elsewhere.

Until we get another data point we are just speculating.

Read the actual paper.  It appears that they did, in fact, witness evolution from single cell into multicell organism.

we shall now witness this thread evolve into greatness.

They're just bending the already fine line between colonial and true multicellular organisms. Call me when one of their colonies evolves into a nematode and then we'll talk.

Forgive me, but I'm in a hurry to learn and don't want to be bothered reading and researching for myself!

Please, tell me:

did these multi-celled "lifeforms" replicate as multi-celled organisms? Or, as is far-more-likely, did they simply reproduce and cluster together for defense?

Thanks!

As an aside, I DO wholeheartedly believe in evolution and would LOVE for this experiment to prove trustworthy, but I'm dubious. I'd suppose (perhaps wrongly) that such mutations would take countless generations. Although, that said, once begun, evolution seems to have become a relatively rapid process, all things considered.

Yes.

They did - the strains became obligatorily multicellular in life-cycle.

People here are greatly overthinking this, and the "releases" may be a bit sensationalized. The introduction outlines the previous research and this is not a completely novel finding. I didn't really pick it all the way apart as I would if I were reviewing it for publication, but it seemed the yeast story cited was better in some ways (they all did it).

The study simply shows that some organisms have the ability to produce the transition in the right circumstances. It does not reflect dramatically on the origin of life or the validity of evolution over all - it is a tiny piece in the context of the overall evidence and level of understanding of the processes involved.

There’s a book called The Red Queen my Matt Ridley that goes into this.  Basically stating that evolution is the constant battle of the predator evolving better methods vs their prey evolving better defenses.  I remember it being a good read

So what are your tight definitions that clearly delineate all organisms into the three classes? You do realize anything you say is apriori, right? Your definitions are your constructs, they aren't "reality". The level of variation is too high to demarcate clearly. Please address cellular slime molds, where individual ameboid cells exist in the lifecycle, then autoassemble into a multicellular organism by aggregation and produce a defined structure with mobility and coordinated movement and distinct developmental regions that define what cells become very particular reproductive structures. When you are done, please address the plasmodial slime molds, wherein a single giant cell can function as a multicellular organism with coordinated movement, the ability to sense the environment and move in predictable locations (dark, moist), the ability to solve puzzles, and solve system design problems, all with no cellular organization at all - no nerve cells, just a bunch of nuclei in ass big single cell blob.

I'm a lot more interested in informing people that have some interest in understanding the processes than trying to alter beliefs or proselytize. You clearly have some preformed ideas that things are certain ways because you have chosen to adhere to certain beliefs, and you are projecting that on every bit of evidence you interpret.

Saying they have genetic variation is far far from saying they were programmed. It is saying we know they have to have genetic variation because we know for a fact that DNA changes over time.

Saying that phylogenetic reconstruction is wild speculation is extremely telling in this regard. Phylogenetic reconstruction is based on aposteriori understanding of the processes involved from empirically assessment. We know how mutations occur because we can observe them. We know how inheritance works because we can observe it. We know it is a law because we understand the physical basis (meiosis, chromosomal inheritance). Those two aspects and simple logical interpretation enable us to reconstruct phylogenies by backtracking. Certain types of changes produce certain patterns, so certain patterns can be interpreted to indicate certain changes. This identifies likely synapomorphies that show common ancestry. You can argue that assuming one character is synapomorhpic could be false, but the analysis is looking at the preponderance of evidence from thousands of characters in the DNA. Furthermore the process has been validated by using viruses that mutate rapidly and can be forced to produced separate lineages by simply separating them on isolated petri-plates (bacteriophages).

I assume you also think it is circular that we can look at current erosion rates and interpret long-term erosional patterns based on that information. And that it is circular that we can look at half-lives with scintillation counters and interpret long term changes in isotope compositions. lol. You don't have to assume that the grand canyon formed by erosion ahead of time to interpret the evidence of erosion and determine it did erode, and at an estimable rate.

Not one book on evolution science/theory explains how something came from nothing.  You're delusional and/or never read a single one of those books if you actually think that.

There's always something that is a precursor to any existing state of life.  Even the very first state of life, the very first single celled organism, had its origins.  Its origins are still a matter of conjecture but it wasn't a magical mythical god waving his hand over something that fell out of his nose and saying "Let this thing be the first life".

We can see how many of the essential building blocks of cellular biology can be synthesized from raw materials using process that can occur naturally.

We've done that a lot over the past few generations.    We haven't yet gone from raw materials to an actual fully assembled single celled organism that was evolved from our own experiments yet,  but it hasn't been very long that we've been doing these experiments.   From the time the earth first cooled enough to support chemical reactions that can lead to the formation of the chemical building blocks of life as we know them,  to the time when this first happened, was likely a span of many millions of years.   Millions of years on a planet that was hot, violent, and extremely chemically active compared to the way our environment is now.

People who have a scientific point of view can see how these processes can eventually lead to life.  Life has the peculiar attribute of being self-organizing and self-sustaining.  When we start seeing combinations of amino acids, enzymes, and peptide chains that also start to show self-organization and self-sustaining properties, then we'll be just that much closer to figuring it all out.

I don't argue against the existence of a god.  In fact I think there is one.  But the god that I believe in is not such a ham-fisted HACK that he has to personally intervene to create life when the existing natural laws of the universe are apparently quite sufficent to serve as a life generating engine.

The idea that all life is the work of an intelligent being is too much for an intelligent and informed human being to stomach, when you consider just how closely genetically interrelated every species is to multiple other species.   Genetic relationships across species interlink every living thing on earth in a genetic web that is complex beyond human understanding,  and you expect a god to just magically create all of these species, both the live ones and the extinct ones, complete with genetic patterns that fit in the big picture without anomalies.    That's utterly absurd.

Creation is a LIE.  And as anybody eventually learns, the more a liar talks, the harder it is for a liar to keep his lies together.  Evidence always comes out that denies the lie.  Evidence NEVER comes to light that supports the lie.

I am professionally engaged but your knowledge goes well beyond the typical. I always appreciate your perspective and many others who bother to take the time to jump into these threads.

I can name most of the fields, but not sure if 7 - would be a cool link.

The ancestor fossil hominin/hominid at the crux of our divergence from chimps has been located and dates at ~6mya. It was clearly not a chimp, but was more like a chimp than us. You would think that would be the nail in the coffin of that mis-interpretation, but no.... And when dated fossils match estimates from molecular clocks, it must be a coincidence, not validation of the phylogenetic interpretation.

http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/sahelanthropus-tchadensis

Because Jesus right?

A bit sensationalized?

The article's title:

What they in fact witnessed was a single celled organism forming a colony when faced with an external threat. Nothing "evolved" as it were, and most certainly not into a multicellular organism. All they discovered was a previously unknown protective mechanism that was already present, and has been known about in other species for a long time.

Like I said, call me when it turns into a nematode. Until then, they haven't found out anything we didn't already know.

You say sensationalized, and I say intentionally misrepresented. And with the intent to mislead people into thinking that there's some new groundbreaking evidence for evolution. Just look how people in this thread are taking the news. They're doing victory laps because they think their side finally won, simply because they don't know any better.

Well, maybe you should read the publication, so you can do better than the popularized media piece on not misrepresenting it, because you're failing now. The title is "De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation" and the link is cited multiple times in the article you are characterizing (instead of interpreting the actual publication). Your arguments are addressed and the claims you state they are making are not made.

Except one "colony" reproduced with another "colony" which produced a progeny "colony" until eventually there were several generations of colonies that were never single celled organisms.

Dude, you are putting way too much effort into your posts.

These threads end up with memes getting thrown around and personal attacks on intelligence and poor parenting.

That’s idiotic.

ironically, this is the most unscientific post in the entire thread.

young earth creationism is not supported by the empirical evidence in hand.  the theory of biological evolution is the inference to the best explanation of currently available evidence.

science is methodologically prohibited from making any claims to the objective truth or falsity of supernatural phenomena.

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii will normally produce 4-8 daughter cells inside the old cell wall before releasing them. I'm wondering if their findings are more related to the effect of predation on their reproductive cycle. All they may have proven is that under extreme conditions they will form larger clusters, and then, instead of releasing individual daughter cells, the clusters break up into smaller ones.

I can't help but feel like the cells in the larger clusters look pretty unhealthy. I just wonder if being all bunched up like that affects their health. I imagine there's a disadvantage to having them all bunched up like that swimming in their own waste. Not being free to move about probably also makes it hard to find food.

My layman's suggestion is that the daughter cells being kept in the cell wall for a period of time is the single celled equivalent to an animal caring for its young. Maybe the number of cells that are allowed to build up is a direct response to predation. So maybe under extreme conditions they'll refuse to separate. Then a colony gets to a size where it reaches the breaking point and they're forced to break off into smaller groups.

I would also be curious to know if these things can survive outside the lab. And if conditions changed, would they start decreasing the size of their colonies? Let's say food became scarce. Would they start breaking off into smaller and smaller groups and eventually go back to being on their own?

Some of us already have. I hate mowing mine and I'd rather have a rock garden.

It sounds like the  most rational way to reconcile religion with the science that lots of religion loves to deny.

I feel the same way when people denounce certain things in the Bible without the slightest grasp of history or context.  They copy and paste something they've read as fact without doing any real research.

Please enlighten us with your profound knowledge of who this Jesus is that you so casually dismiss?

Everyone knows only GAWD has this ability and the Earth is only 6000 years old

So... let me explain how that works in real life.  I worked with a guy who had been one, and who still had friends attempting to work as wildlife biologists (all FAU grads, some working for FAU).

Wildlife biology is 'funded' only when a certain highly-biased side (which-ever side that may be) collects/allocates enough funds for the 'studies' to be made.  By and large, you better bet your bottom dollar that starving wildlife biologists like to be employed... and that means agreeing with the funder for any program to have a hope of continuing.

Sure, by all means - do all the schooling, learn all the things, and get out there and experience the real world.  There are high-school teaching jobs awaiting you when you finally bow-out of the process.