ReviewJournal of experimental botany2020
The many roads to and from multicellularity.
Review in Journal of experimental botany, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- The evolutionary origins of streptophyte multicellularity.The New phytologist · 2026Review
- Evolutionary transition from single-cell to multi-cell organisms: the role of surface waters and their hydrodynamics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Direct benefits are not necessary for the evolution of multicellularity.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- The selfish ribosome.ArXiv · 2026Article
- Developmental phylotranscriptomics in grapevine suggests an ancestral role of somatic embryogenesis.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Molecular and Functional Convergences Associated with Complex Multicellularity in Eukarya.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Multicellular cooperation and the hallmarks of cancer: A new foundation.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
- Review
- The legacy and evolvability of Pere Alberch's ideas.Interface focus · 2024Article
- Phylogeny and evolution of streptophyte algae.Annals of botany · 2024Review
- Metabolic adaptation pilots the differentiation of human hematopoietic cells.Life science alliance · 2024Article
- Physical constraints during Snowball Earth drive the evolution of multicellularity.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Phylogenomic insights into the first multicellular streptophyte.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Cryogenian Origins of Multicellularity in Archaeplastida.Genome biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Reuniting philosophy and science to advance cancer research.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2023Article
- Multicellularity and the Need for Communication-A Systematic Overview on (Algal) Plasmodesmata and Other Types of Symplasmic Cell Connections.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Intrinsically disordered proteins and conformational noise: The hypothesis a decade later.iScience · 2023Review
- The origin of human epithelial tissue.Histology and histopathology · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The multiple origins of multicellularity had far-reaching consequences ranging from the appearance of phenotypically complex life-forms to their effects on Earth's aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Yet, many important questions remain. For example, do all lineages and clades share an ancestral developmental predisposition for multicellularity emerging from genomic and biophysical motifs shared from a last common ancestor, or are the multiple origins of multicellularity truly independent evolutionary events? In this review, we highlight recent developments and pitfalls in understanding the evolution of multicellularity with an emphasis on plants (here defined broadly to include the polyphyletic algae), but also draw upon insights from animals and their holozoan relatives, fungi and amoebozoans. Based on our review, we conclude that the evolution of multicellular organisms requires three phases (origination by disparate cell-cell attachment modalities, followed by integration by lineage-specific physiological mechanisms, and autonomization by natural selection) that have been achieved differently in different lineages.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.