Naked Science Forum

General Science => General Science => Topic started by: thedoc on 10/02/2012 18:33:32

Title: Can yeast give us an insight into our evolution?
Post by: thedoc on 10/02/2012 18:33:32

Prior to about 1 billion years ago, all life on earth consisted of single-celled organisms. Then something happened to trigger squads of these cells to team up together to produce the first multicellular organisms, like our bodies, and this was a watershed in the evolution of life on Earth.  Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have managed to make yeasts do something similar, but in this case it only took them about 60 days...
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Title: Re: Can yeast give us an insight into our evolution?
Post by: grizelda on 30/01/2012 03:23:33

Scaling up from this, we can see that organisms or subspecies which cannot compete are programmed to commit suicide to aid in the success of life. This is why most religions have gone extinct, as they eugenically modify their adherents into a slave-like zombie state which cannot compete with real humans, and thus shuffle off in suicidal religious wars of extinction. Of course, nowadays the godless religion of political correctness protects the zombies and creates more of them by only allowing the politically correct slaves to flourish, which is why you see them behaving more like priests than bureaucrats.

Title: Re: Can yeast give us an insight into our evolution?
Post by: CliffordK on 30/01/2012 10:15:47

Interesting research.

However, molds (multicellular), yeasts (unicellular), and fungi  are all very closely related.

It is quite likely that the multicellular colonies did not in fact develop de novo.

I would think it would be much less likelihood to have developed similar colonies starting with amoebas or protozoa.