Multicellular organism

Then eukaryotes and meiosis, which is how a biologist refers to organized sex, happen about one point five to two point five billion years ago.

Multicellularity, which gives us developmental biology, about a billion years ago.

All the major body plans for animals appear to have, uh, with the exception perhaps of the, uh, jellyfish and a few of their relatives, they all seem to have originated about five hundred and fifty million years ago.

There was a near loss of life on the planet in the Permian mass extinction.

That's an internal problem, but you also have external problems.

Multicellularity is tough because you've got things like viruses and bacteria and parasites, which are always coming at the system and trying to take advantage of it.

So if a multicellular creature wants a long life, that depends on a lot of layers of detection and repair and defense and communication working across billions or trillions of cells.

So in this light, the fact that you're alive and listening to this podcast means your particular body has a history of decades of successful cooperation among the trillions of small pieces and parts that make you up.

So the creation of the egg and the sperm didn't make a baby.

Multicellularity didn't make a baby.

Both together made the baby.

You have the genetic material from two gametes coming together to make a zygote.

I don't think I knew this.

Multicellularity happened more than once? Yeah.

Like we went from- Three times ... single-celled organisms to multi- multicelled organisms three different times? Yeah, d- I mean, I actually don't know for sure that it was only three times, but plants, animals, and fungi all, all did it separately.

So prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and- They're all eukaryotic ... fungi.