A new paper describing the results of a yeast evolution experiment has been published in Evolution. Jordan Gulli exposed nascent multicellular “snowflake yeast” to an environment in which solitary multicellular clusters experienced low survival. In response, snowflake yeast evolved to form cooperative groups composed of thousands of multicellular clusters.
Figure 2 from Gulli et al. 2019. Evolution of proteinaceous aggregates that bind many multicellular clusters. When subjected to strong settling selection, snowflake yeast evolved to form cooperative aggregates composed of hundreds of clusters (A). A composite image (B) reveals the aggregates are composed of both protein (C, green, Qubit fluorescent protein stain) and DNA (D, red, propidium iodide). Cells embedded within the aggregate are shown in blue (E, Cell Tracker Blue). Scale bars are 500 μm.
