News
Mechanical forces as an evolutionary factor to drive multicellularity
This week in Science, an interdisciplinary, international team around Alexander Bisson (Brandeis University) set out to understand how multicellularity arose in archaea. We report on the complex, tissue-like multicellularity that evolved independently of animals and plants using computational, cell and mechanobiology techniques. We show that haloarchaeal cells respond to mechanical compression by differentiating from multinucleated cell aggregates into an epithelial-like multicellular architecture. These archaeal tissues differ mechanically and morphologically from single archaeal cells and resemble much more the properties of eukaryotic tissue lifestyle. The discovered behaviour is widespread among Haloarchaea spp.and it appears that multicellularity can be considered a natural selection bottleneck in high-salt environments.
Our findings represent a landmark in the current understanding of complex multicellularity and add an unforeseen central role of archaea in the physics-evo-devo field.
Reference:
Theopi Rados, Olivia S. Leland, Pedro Escudeiro, John Mallon, Katherine Andre, Ido Caspy, Andriko von Kügelgen, Elad Stolovicki, Sinead Nguyen, Inés Lucía Patop, L. Thiberio Rangel, Sebastian Kadener, Lars D. Renner, Vera Thiel, Yoav Soen, Tanmay A.M. Bharat, Vikram Alva, and Alex Bisson. Tissue-Like Multicellular Development Triggered by Mechanical Compression in Archaea. Science. 2025, 388, 109-115.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adu0047
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu0047
Contact: Lars D. Renner (renner@ipfdd.de), phone: +49 351 4658-787
04.04.2025