Scientists replicate key evolutionary step in life on earth

Hi, Wounded King. This was my original thought when I read this article. To me, this yeast research is really little more than a replication of the Chlorella work, which I had been taught during my undergraduate and have taught to my introductory-biology students. It kind of embarrassed and offended me when this new team came out touting their work as novel and unique.They were apparently aware of Boraas et al. (1998), because they cited it in the introduction. However, I can't find anything in this new study that really, clearly differentiates it from the Chlorella experiment, so it was a real disappointment to me to see the way these researchers spun their work as profoundly novel for both the lay and technical audiences.On the positive side, though, it was a very good study with very interesting results. I particularly liked their discussion of "within-cluster division of labor": that's the real key for understanding the transition from clusters of cells to true multicellularity. I hope it stimulates more interest in this area of research, because these sorts of case studies are excellent tools for demonstrating evolutionary principles in a classroom.