Metabolically-driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast

The ecological and evolutionary success of multicellular lineages stems substantially from their increased size relative to unicellular ancestors. However, large size poses biophysical challenges, especially regarding nutrient transport to all cells: these constraints are typically overcome through multicellular innovations. Here we show that an emergent biophysical mechanism --- spontaneous fluid flows arising from metabolically generated density gradients --- can alleviate constraints on nutrient transport, enabling exponential growth in nascent multicellular clusters of yeast lacking any multicellular adaptations for nutrient transport or fluid flow. Beyond a threshold size, the metabolic activity of experimentally-evolved snowflake yeast clusters drives large-scale fluid flows that transport nutrients throughout the cluster at speeds comparable to those generated by the cilia of extant multicellular organisms. These flows support exponential growth at macroscopic sizes that theory p..., All data was collected using optical microscopy or scanning electron microscopy, , # Metabolically-driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast

\[[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000dx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000dx)]([https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000dx](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0000000dx))

## Description of the data and file structure

The data uploaded here was collected to evaluate fluid flows surrounding and growth rates for different-sized clusters of snowflake yeast. 

All data comes with associated notes in the files which describe the frame rate at which movies were collected along with scale bars for the spatial calibration of the movies and images. 

The data is mostly time series(images) collected via microscopy and particle tracks (CSVs) which are analysed using mosaic particle tracker in open source image processing software image J

Each folder uploaded corresponds to a figure in the manuscript titled \"Metabolically-driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast\"

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