Publication Date:
2001-04-03
Description:
What would be the advantage of unicellular organisms becoming multicellular? For organisms that feed on organic food (heterotrophs), the most efficient way to produce energy is to metabolize the food by aerobic respiration, but the fastest way is to metabolize it by fermentation. In their Perspective, Cox and Bonner discuss a mathematical model (Pfeiffer et al.), which shows that when these two kinds of organisms (respirators and fermenters) compete for a limited food source, the respirators manage best when they are grouped in clusters rather than remaining as separate cells. In this way, multicellularity could have originated.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Cox, E -- Bonner, J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2001 Apr 20;292(5516):448-9. Epub 2001 Mar 29.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. ecox@princeton.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11283359" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adenosine Triphosphate/*metabolism
;
Biological Evolution
;
Carbohydrate Metabolism
;
Diffusion
;
*Fermentation
;
Mathematics
;
*Models, Biological
;
Mucor/cytology/metabolism
;
Myxococcales/cytology/physiology
;
Myxomycetes/cytology/physiology
;
*Oxygen Consumption
;
Thermodynamics
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
