Even the flabbiest of us admires those with taught bodies. Nothing like the middle-ager at the beach contracting some muscles to look a little thinner, a little more in shape. Anyway, those with flabby forms do have some muscle beneath the layers of fat; they, too, can flex. But who would have thought that such contraction, such flexing, might be one of life’s secrets, one of the reasons that we are multicellular? It never crossed my mind. Cherish the muscle! Revel in muscular contractions!
And then I read “Multicellularity: How contraction has shaped evolution,” an eLife paper by Mukund Thattai of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India.* In a short review of research Thattai links actomyosin (aka actinomyosin) with the transition from single-cell critters to multi-cell ones like you and me. One study of a choanoflagellate by Nicole King, Thibaut Brunet, Ben Larsen, and Tess Linden demonstrated the cup-like colony of cells point their flagella toward the inside of the “cup” in bright light, but in darkness, they point their flagella outward.** They suggest, and Thattai accepts that suggestion, that the collective contraction is “reminiscent of the contractions that generate curvature in developing animal tissues.”
Makes me think of coral polyps, and anemones, and the guy I see in the mirror, all multicellular and all with an “inside.” Folding. What am I some kind of mushy origami? Seems so, just not one made of paper. And collectively, aren’t we a bit like contractile cells making actomyosin rings?
Think of whole groups of multicellular organisms like, for example, cliques, clubs, and countries, all at times, folded in upon themselves, all cuplike, especially in the darkness of exclusion, bias, and fear. All members universally contracting. Circle the wagons! And it’s always been so since the multicellular evolved into the social and then the political, contracting into a single voice of unity. The society and the party exist inside the “cup,” the multicellular contraction orienting every unit inward.
Oh! To think that half a billion years or so of evolution in multicellularity has brought us to a closure of minds, to an inward-folding state in which even the flabbiest of minds puts on a flexing show like that middle-aged guy on the beach, thinking that the rest of the world will take him for an exuberant youth with an openness to fresh thinking. But the rest of the world sees the contractions for what they are, a vain attempt to conceal the flab, the fat of years without exercising openness.
Actomyosin. It worked its magic in turning the isolated cells of the deep past into the conjoined cells of the present curvature of humans, multicellular organisms with consciousness that evolved from that process and turned inward to isolate our contracting minds in the origami of bias and mutual approbation. In some ways, we aren’t much different from those ancient choanoflagellates.
*Thattai, Mukund. 14 Nov 2019. Insight: Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology. https://elifesciences.org/articles/52805 Accessed January 21, 2020.
**Brunet, T. et al., Light-regulated collective contractility in a multicellular choanoflagellate. Science 366: 326-334. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay2346
And then I read “Multicellularity: How contraction has shaped evolution,” an eLife paper by Mukund Thattai of the National Centre for Biological Sciences in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India.* In a short review of research Thattai links actomyosin (aka actinomyosin) with the transition from single-cell critters to multi-cell ones like you and me. One study of a choanoflagellate by Nicole King, Thibaut Brunet, Ben Larsen, and Tess Linden demonstrated the cup-like colony of cells point their flagella toward the inside of the “cup” in bright light, but in darkness, they point their flagella outward.** They suggest, and Thattai accepts that suggestion, that the collective contraction is “reminiscent of the contractions that generate curvature in developing animal tissues.”
Makes me think of coral polyps, and anemones, and the guy I see in the mirror, all multicellular and all with an “inside.” Folding. What am I some kind of mushy origami? Seems so, just not one made of paper. And collectively, aren’t we a bit like contractile cells making actomyosin rings?
Think of whole groups of multicellular organisms like, for example, cliques, clubs, and countries, all at times, folded in upon themselves, all cuplike, especially in the darkness of exclusion, bias, and fear. All members universally contracting. Circle the wagons! And it’s always been so since the multicellular evolved into the social and then the political, contracting into a single voice of unity. The society and the party exist inside the “cup,” the multicellular contraction orienting every unit inward.
Oh! To think that half a billion years or so of evolution in multicellularity has brought us to a closure of minds, to an inward-folding state in which even the flabbiest of minds puts on a flexing show like that middle-aged guy on the beach, thinking that the rest of the world will take him for an exuberant youth with an openness to fresh thinking. But the rest of the world sees the contractions for what they are, a vain attempt to conceal the flab, the fat of years without exercising openness.
Actomyosin. It worked its magic in turning the isolated cells of the deep past into the conjoined cells of the present curvature of humans, multicellular organisms with consciousness that evolved from that process and turned inward to isolate our contracting minds in the origami of bias and mutual approbation. In some ways, we aren’t much different from those ancient choanoflagellates.
*Thattai, Mukund. 14 Nov 2019. Insight: Cell Biology, Evolutionary Biology. https://elifesciences.org/articles/52805 Accessed January 21, 2020.
**Brunet, T. et al., Light-regulated collective contractility in a multicellular choanoflagellate. Science 366: 326-334. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aay2346
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