ArticleBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology2012
An epithelial tissue in Dictyostelium challenges the traditional origin of metazoan multicellularity.
Article in BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Queue Gaps Among the IQGAPs inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Reduced cell-substrate adhesion formation promotes cell migration inMolecular biology of the cell · 2025Article
- Reduced cell-substrate adhesion formation promotes cell migration inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- The NaBiophysical reviews · 2023Review
- Astral microtubule cross-linking safeguards uniform nuclear distribution in the Drosophila syncytium.The Journal of cell biology · 2022Article
- Genetic transformation ofeLife · 2020Article
- Interplay of mesoscale physics and agent-like behaviors in the parallel evolution of aggregative multicellularity.EvoDevo · 2020Review
- Article
- Review
- Adherens Junctions and Desmosomes Coordinate Mechanics and Signaling to Orchestrate Tissue Morphogenesis and Function: An Evolutionary Perspective.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2018Review
- Analysis of a vinculin homolog in a sponge (phylum Porifera) reveals that vertebrate-like cell adhesions emerged early in animal evolution.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2018Article
- Interacting-heads motif has been conserved as a mechanism of myosin II inhibition since before the origin of animals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Phylogenetic evidence for the modular evolution of metazoan signalling pathways.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Defining functional interactions during biogenesis of epithelial junctions.Nature communications · 2016Article
- Regulation of Spatiotemporal Patterns by Biological Variability: General Principles and Applications to Dictyostelium discoideum.PLoS computational biology · 2015Review
- Pre-metazoan origins and evolution of the cadherin adhesome.Biology open · 2014Article
- Danio rerio αE-catenin is a monomeric F-actin binding protein with distinct properties from Mus musculus αE-catenin.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2013Article
- The evolutionary origin of epithelial cell-cell adhesion mechanisms.Current topics in membranes · 2013Article
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Abstract
We hypothesize that aspects of animal multicellularity originated before the divergence of metazoans from fungi and social amoebae. Polarized epithelial tissues are a defining feature of metazoans and contribute to the diversity of animal body plans. The recent finding of a polarized epithelium in the non-metazoan social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum demonstrates that epithelial tissue is not a unique feature of metazoans, and challenges the traditional paradigm that multicellularity evolved independently in social amoebae and metazoans. An alternative view, presented here, is that the common ancestor of social amoebae, fungi, and animals spent a portion of its life cycle in a multicellular state and possessed molecular machinery necessary for forming an epithelial tissue. Some descendants of this ancestor retained multicellularity, while others reverted to unicellularity. This hypothesis makes testable predictions regarding tissue organization in close relatives of metazoans and provides a novel conceptual framework for studies of early animal evolution.
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