Genetic predisposition towards multicellularity in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

The evolution from unicellular to multicellular organisms serves as the first step towards further phenotypic innovations. A number of research groups have shown that simple, obligate multicellularity can evolve under selection in the laboratory. However, less is known about the extent to which deterministic factors, notably ancestral genotypes and environments, favor the evolutionary transition from single cells to multicellularity. In this study, we tested whether certain genotypes are predisposed to evolve multicellularity in different environments.