From David Lloyd, Cardiff University
Some crucial steps in the journey of single-celled yeasts to multicellular form occur very quickly, far quicker than the 350 generations over 60 days noted (25 June, p 10).
Even the 90 minutes it takes for a new cell to bud off is a long time compared with the 5 minutes or so needed to establish a conversation between two yeast cells lying close together. Within this time, spontaneous rhythms of energy production are generated and transmitted between the cells. Soon this dynamic state can spread through a population of many thousands.
Thus a rhythm within a single organism leads to cell-cell communication, a conversation and eventually to the coherence of a crowd.
Social and altruistic behaviour appears even in this “simplest” of eukaryotes. Irrespective of whether yeasts were once multicellular organisms or not, they clearly prefer to form a choir than sing solo.
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Cardiff, UK
