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Originally published in Science Express on 29 March 2001
Science 20 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5516, pp. 448 - 449
DOI: 10.1126/science.1060456
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Perspectives

ECOLOGY:
The Advantages of Togetherness

Edward Cox and John Bonner

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.

The authors are in the Departments of Molecular Biology (E.C.) and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (J.B.), Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. E-mail: ecox{at}princeton.edu , jtbonner{at}princeton.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)