Evolution of irreversible somatic differentiation

Gao, Yuanxiao; Park, Hye Jin; Traulsen, Arne; Pichugin, Yuriy

doi:10.7554/elife.66711

Cited by 4 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Colonies are born small, but due to cell divisions they increase in size and, eventually, fragment, so the number of colonies in the population increases. The life cycle maximizing the population growth rate has a selective advantage as it outgrows all competitors ( Roze and Michod, 2001 ; Libby et al, 2014 ; Pichugin et al, 2017 ; Pichugin et al, 2019 ; Staps et al, 2019 ; Gao et al, 2019 ; Pichugin and Traulsen, 2020 ; Gao et al, 2021 ; Pichugin, 2022 ; Pichugin and Traulsen, 2022 ). For groups made of identical cells, growth competition models of evolution predict that some life cycles cannot be the winners of this growth competition under any conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of clonal multicellular life cycles

Ress

Traulsen

Pichugin

2022

eLife

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The evolution of multicellular life cycles is a central process in the course of the emergence of multicellularity. The simplest multicellular life cycle is comprised of the growth of the propagule into a colony and its fragmentation to give rise to new propagules. The majority of theoretical models assume selection among life cycles to be driven by internal properties of multicellular groups, resulting in growth competition. At the same time, the influence of interactions between groups on the evolution of life cycles is rarely even considered. Here, we present a model of colonial life cycle evolution taking into account group interactions. Our work shows that the outcome of evolution could be coexistence between multiple life cycles or that the outcome may depend on the initial state of the population – scenarios impossible without group interactions. At the same time, we found that some results of these simpler models remain relevant: evolutionary stable strategies in our model are restricted to binary fragmentation – the same class of life cycles that contains all evolutionarily optimal life cycles in the model without interactions. Our results demonstrate that while models neglecting interactions can capture short-term dynamics, they fall short in predicting the population-scale picture of evolution.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of clonal multicellular life cycles

Ress

Traulsen

Pichugin

2022

eLife

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“…For instance, V. Rossetti et al assume a fragmenting filamentous life cycle similar to ours and explore when division of labor may evolve [ 52 , 56 , 76 ]. Other studies have considered the evolution of reproductive division of labor [ 62 , 77 , 78 ], terminal cell differentiation [ 79 ], and programmed cell death [ 57 ]; but importantly these works do not adopt a comparative approach to investigate what other multicellular life cycles may evolve these traits. Studies of multicellular adaptation that do compare different multicellular life cycles often impose some selective environment and determine which life cycle is fittest under these conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minor variations in multicellular life cycles have major effects on adaptation

2023

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Multicellularity has evolved several independent times over the past hundreds of millions of years and given rise to a wide diversity of complex life. Recent studies have found that large differences in the fundamental structure of early multicellular life cycles can affect fitness and influence multicellular adaptation. Yet, there is an underlying assumption that at some scale or categorization multicellular life cycles are similar in terms of their adaptive potential. Here, we consider this possibility by exploring adaptation in a class of simple multicellular life cycles of filamentous organisms that only differ in one respect, how many daughter filaments are produced. We use mathematical models and evolutionary simulations to show that despite the similarities, qualitatively different mutations fix. In particular, we find that mutations with a tradeoff between cell growth and group survival, i.e. “selfish” or “altruistic” traits, spread differently. Specifically, altruistic mutations more readily spread in life cycles that produce few daughters while in life cycles producing many daughters either type of mutation can spread depending on the environment. Our results show that subtle changes in multicellular life cycles can fundamentally alter adaptation.

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“…The model assumption corresponds to studies concerning size effect on growth [ 29 – 34 ]. The size perturbations used in our work allow a wide range of size functional forms to be investigated, including those studied in previous work [ 11 , 12 , 47 ]. If the size function is arbitrary (randomly choose each χ n ), we found the frequently observed optimal reproductive strategy 1 + 1.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity

Gao

Pichugin

Gokhale

et al. 2022

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Multicellular organisms potentially show a large degree of diversity in reproductive strategies, producing offspring with varying sizes and compositions compared to their unicellular ancestors. In reality, only a few of these reproductive strategies are prevalent. To understand why this could be the case, we develop a stage-structured population model to probe the evolutionary growth advantages of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellular organisms. The performance of reproductive strategies is evaluated by the growth rates of the corresponding populations. We identify the optimal reproductive strategy, leading to the largest growth rate for a population. Considering the effects of organism size and cellular interaction, we found that distinct reproductive strategies could perform uniquely or equally well under different conditions. If a single reproductive strategy is optimal, it is binary splitting, dividing into two parts. Our results show that organism size and cellular interaction can play crucial roles in shaping reproductive strategies in nascent multicellularity. Our model sheds light on understanding the mechanism driving the evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity. Beyond multicellularity, our results imply that a crucial factor in the evolution of unicellular species’ reproductive strategies is organism size.

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Evolution of irreversible somatic differentiation

Cited by 4 publications

References 42 publications

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of clonal multicellular life cycles

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of clonal multicellular life cycles

Minor variations in multicellular life cycles have major effects on adaptation

Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity

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