#MulticellularBacteria Evolve Defenses that Resemble the Immune System https://www.the-scientist.com/multicellular-bacteria-evolve-defenses-that-resemble-the-immune-system-71807

Targeted hypermutation of putative antigen sensors in multicellular bacteria https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2316469121

"the team chose pink berries, which are millimeter sized aggregates of #bacteria living on the floor of #SaltMarshes in #WoodsHole, #Massachusetts that tend to evolve slowly... they’re wild, but they’re not so ephemeral and changing that we can’t ask mechanistic questions"

@animalculum

Another example of #MulticellularBacteria, this time from the open ocean:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/ocean-bacteria-reveal-an-unexpected-multicellular-form-20221102/

Perhaps it’s quite common, but we’re just not used to looking?

Did flooding force bacterial #multicellularity? https://micro-bites.org/2022/11/07/did-flooding-force-bacterial-multicellularity/ #MulticellularBacteria #Bacteria #Microbes #Caves

Paper: Novel multicellular #prokaryote discovered next to an #underground stream https://elifesciences.org/articles/71920

How life went from one cell to #multicellular is a hotly debated topic among #scientists... A #limestone #cave in the northern #Kyushu Island of #Japan was hiding one clue: a fascinating new organism!