skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Complexity in a Simple Self-Assembling System: Lecithin-Water–Ethanol Mixtures Exhibit a Re-Entrant Phase Transition and a Vesicle–Micelle Transition (VMT) on Heating
Award ID(s):
2226547
PAR ID:
10574567
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
ACS
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Langmuir
ISSN:
0743-7463
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. null (Ed.)
  2. null (Ed.)
  3. Abstract Multicellular evolution is a major transition associated with momentous diversification of multiple lineages and increased developmental complexity. The volvocine algae comprise a valuable system for the study of this transition, as they span from unicellular to undifferentiated and differentiated multicellular morphologies despite their genomes being similar, suggesting multicellular evolution requires few genetic changes to undergo dramatic shifts in developmental complexity. Here, the evolutionary dynamics of six volvocine genomes were examined, where a gradual loss of genes was observed in parallel to the co-option of a few key genes. Protein complexes in the six species exhibited novel interactions, suggesting that gene loss could play a role in evolutionary novelty. This finding was supported by gene network modeling, where gene loss outpaces gene gain in generating novel stable network states. These results suggest gene loss, in addition to gene gain and co-option, may be important for the evolution developmental complexity. 
    more » « less