Building a multicellular organism

Origins of differentiation via phenotypic plasticity

How cell types of multicellular organisms came to be differentiated is still an open issue. Here I offer a model that posits that the origins of some cell differentiation patterns were originally passive outcomes of environmental effects. As cells' contact with the external environment was diminished, their patterns of gene expression were altered, due to changes in concentrations of externally supplied substances. Later, as multicellular growth continued, the relationships of cell layers to each other shifted, producing concentration gradients of signaling molecules. These gradients emanated both from the external cell layer toward the inside and from internal cell layers to adjacent layers. In this scenario then, differentiation arose initially as a by-product of the changing patterns of gene expression and of the complex mixtures and changing concentrations of substances passing among layers. Subsequent selection would operate to stabilize the expression patterns in those cell layers whose phenotypes provide a fitness advantage to the organism.

Cell-selfish modes of evolution and mutations directed after transcriptional bypass

During transcription, prokaryotic and eukaryotic RNA polymerases bypass and misread (transcriptional mutagenesis) several classes of DNA lesions. For example, misreading of 8-OH-dG generates mRNAs containing G to T transversions. After translation, if the mutant protein briefly allowed the cell a growth-DNA replication advantage, then precocious DNA replication would bypass that unrepaired 8-OH-dG and misinsert dA opposite the directing DNA lesion with a higher probability than would be experienced for 8-OH-G lesions at other positions in otherwise identical neighboring cells. Such retromutations would have been tested for their imparted growth advantage as mRNA before they became heritable DNA mutations. The logical properties of a mode of evolution that utilizes directed-retromutagenesis were compared one by one with those of the standard neo-Darwinian mode. The retromutagenesis mode, while minimizing mutational load, is cell-selfish; fitness is for an immediate growth advantage rather than future reproductive potential. In prokaryotes, an evolutionary mode that involves standard Darwinian fitness testing of novel alleles in the genetic background of origin followed by clonal expansion also favors cell-selfish allele combinations when linkage disequilibrium is practiced. For metazoa and plants to have evolved organized tissues, cell-selfish modes of evolution represent systems-poisons that must be totally suppressed. The feedback loops that allow evolution to be cell-serving in prokaryotes are actively blocked in eukaryotes by traits that restrict fitness to future reproductive potential. These traits include (i) delay of fitness testing until after the mutation is made permanently heritable, (ii) diploidy to further delay fitness testing, (iii) segregation of somatic lines from germ lines, (iv) testing of novel alleles against randomized allele combinations constructed by obligate sex, and (v) obligate genetic death to insure that that the most basic systems unit of selfish allele combinatorial uniqueness is the species instead of the cell. The analyses indicate that modes of evolution in addition to our neo-Darwinian one could have existed utilizing known molecular mechanisms. The evolution of multicellularity was as much the discarding of old cell-selfish habits as the acquisition of new altruistic ones.

Origin and evolution of eukaryotic apoptosis: the bacterial connection

The availability of numerous complete genome sequences of prokaryotes and several eukaryotic genome sequences provides for new insights into the origin of unique functional systems of the eukaryotes. Several key enzymes of the apoptotic machinery, including the paracaspase and metacaspase families of the caspase-like protease superfamily, apoptotic ATPases and NACHT family NTPases, and mitochondrial HtrA-like proteases, have diverse homologs in bacteria, but not in archaea. Phylogenetic analysis strongly suggests a mitochondrial origin for metacaspases and the HtrA-like proteases, whereas acquisition from Actinomycetes appears to be the most likely scenario for AP-ATPases. The homologs of apoptotic proteins are particularly abundant and diverse in bacteria that undergo complex development, such as Actinomycetes, Cyanobacteria and alpha-proteobacteria, the latter being progenitors of the mitochondria. In these bacteria, the apoptosis-related domains typically form multidomain proteins, which are known or inferred to participate in signal transduction and regulation of gene expression. Some of these bacterial multidomain proteins contain fusions between apoptosis-related domains, such as AP-ATPase fused with a metacaspase or a TIR domain. Thus, bacterial homologs of eukaryotic apoptotic machinery components might functionally and physically interact with each other as parts of signaling pathways that remain to be investigated. An emerging scenario of the origin of the eukaryotic apoptotic system involves acquisition of several central apoptotic effectors as a consequence of mitochondrial endosymbiosis and probably also as a result of subsequent, additional horizontal gene transfer events, which was followed by recruitment of newly emerging eukaryotic domains as adaptors.