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We are told: One gene may drive leap from single cell to multicellular life

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A philosopher used to say, beware the man of one book. Today, we might say, be cautious considering the claims of the scientist of one gene.

From New Scientist we hear,:

The leap from single-celled life to multicellular creatures is easier than we ever thought. And it seems there’s more than one way it can happen.

At some point after life first emerged, some cells came together to form the first multicellular organism. This happened perhaps as early as 2.1 billion years ago. Others followed – multicellularity is thought to have evolved independently at least 20 times – eventually giving rise to complex life, such as humans.

How about making it easier? complex life such as millipedes?

But no organism is known to have made that transition in the past 200 million years, so how and why it happened is hard to study.

Funny that. Just when we’d be closer to having evidence…

Neither Ratcliff’s yeast nor Herron’s algae has unequivocally crossed the critical threshold to multicellularity, which would require cells to divide labour between them, says Richard Michod of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Actually, even if they did, it’s been done before, for maybe hundreds of millions of years, by the starving amoebas. The trouble is, the amoeba conglomerate always breaks up as soon as they find a food source. They really prefer unicellular life.

File:A small cup of coffee.JPG ‘Tis the gift to be simple?

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Comments
The leap from single-celled life to multicellular creatures is easier than we ever thought.
Who thought it wasn't easy? Of course it's easy! Here's an example:
The miracle of morphogenesis, cell adhesion, polarity and cytoskeletal regulation Prof. Mark Peifer http://hstalks.com/main/view_talk.php?t=974
Here's another example:
Building the Body Plan: The Miracle Morphogenesis http://www.health.pitt.edu/events/300413cell-biology-seminar-building-body-plan-miracle-morphogenesis
Here's another one:
Pay attention to the highlighted text @561 in the following thread: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-569129
BTW, keep in mind that morphogenesis is part of organogenesis, which is part of the whole development show. But as one can see in the above three examples, they have figured out the whole thing. Haven't they?Dionisio
July 3, 2015
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Hey you guys, you clearly have no imagination. It's like the Internet, all we needed was modems. If I can imagine how it could have happened the burden of proof is on you to keep disproving my theories until I run out of ideas. Otherwise you're just stick-in-the-mud Creationists or nerdy killjoy ID people with an evidence fetish.englishmaninistanbul
July 2, 2015
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I hereby name this gene the Mike Gene.Mung
July 2, 2015
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I work in software development. I don't talk about how easy a required change is until the change is accomplished, when I can list every single detail of it. But speculation counts as proof in the field of evolution.EvilSnack
July 2, 2015
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multicellularity - A bunch of cells bumped together and managed somehow to stick. Voila! Multicellular life. multicellularity - a single cell divides into two, then four, then eight ... All the while maintaining a cohosive unity and differentiation resulting in a form that is not the result of a bunch of cells bumping into each other and sticking. And from that equivocation, much nonsense arises. But it's not science.Mung
July 2, 2015
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I am reminded of the "program development plans" where in Phase 1 you claim you'll collect requirements and in Phase 3 you claim you'll field the completed system. And in between, is Phase 2: a cloud labelled "a miracle occurs". Since no one ever wants to do any serious analysis of the requirements, this makes development of the system impossible. So in this case, if you ASSUME that a couple single cell things decided over coffee one morning that it would be wicked cool to become multi-cellular and so they did, then, yeah, you don't need to explain HOW they did it. But that ain't Science. It ain't even professional. You're kind of expected to propose an actual Theory about the "how" to give your words some significance.mahuna
July 2, 2015
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