The transition to multicellularity has occurred numerous times in all domains of life, yet its initial steps are poorly understood. The volvocine green algae are a tractable system for understanding the genetic basis of multicellularity including the initial formation of cooperative cell groups. Here we report the genome sequence of the undifferentiated colonial alga, Gonium pectorale, where group formation evolved by co-option of the retinoblastoma cell cycle regulatory pathway. Significantly, expression of the Gonium retinoblastoma cell cycle regulator in unicellular Chlamydomonas causes it to become colonial. The presence of these changes in undifferentiated Gonium indicates extensive group-level adaptation during the initial step in the evolution of multicellularity. These results emphasize an early and formative step in the evolution of multicellularity, the evolution of cell cycle regulation, one that may shed light on the evolutionary history of other multicellular innovations and evolutionary transitions.

Altruistic suicide is best known in the context of programmed cell death (PCD) in multicellular individuals, which is understoodas an adaptive process that contributes to the development and functionality of the organism. After the realization that PCDlike processes can also be induced in single-celled lineages, the paradigm of altruistic cell death has been extended to include these active cell death processes in unicellular organisms. Here, we critically evaluate the current conceptual framework and the experimental data used to support the notion of altruistic suicide in unicellular lineages, and propose new perspectives. We argue that importing the paradigm of altruistic cell death from multicellular organisms to explain active death in unicellular lineages has the potential to limit the types of questions we ask, thus biasing our understanding of the nature, origin, and maintenance of this trait. We also emphasize the need to distinguish between the benefits and the adaptive role of a trait. Lastly, we provide an alternative framework that allows for the possibility that active death in single-celled organisms is a maladaptive trait maintained as a byproduct of selection on pro-survival functions, but that could-under conditions in which kin/group selection can act-be co-opted into an altruistic trait. K E Y W O R D S :Adaptive role, co-option, evolution, maladaptive trait, programmed cell death. The Problem of Self-Induced Death: An Evolutionary Conundrum"Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed . . . for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor." (Darwin) Typically, evolutionary theory has been concerned with explaining life. Within this framework, selection is expected to 4 Equal contributors.

Programmed cell death (PCD), a genetically regulated cell suicide program, is ubiquitous in the living world. In contrast to multicellular organisms, in which cells cooperate for the good of the organism, in unicells the cell is the organism and PCD presents a fundamental evolutionary problem. Why should an organism actively kill itself as opposed to dying in a nonprogrammed way? Proposed arguments vary from PCD in unicells being maladaptive to the assumption that it is an extreme form of altruism. To test whether PCD could be beneficial to nearby cells, we induced programmed and nonprogrammed death in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Cellular contents liberated during non-PCD are detrimental to others, while the contents released during PCD are beneficial. The number of cells in growing cultures was used to measure fitness. Thermostability studies revealed that the beneficial effect of the PCD supernatant most likely involves simple heat-stable biomolecules. Non-PCD supernatant contains heat-sensitive molecules like cellular proteases and chlorophyll. These data indicate that the mode of death affects the origin and maintenance of PCD. The way in which an organism dies can have beneficial or deleterious effects on the fitness of its neighbors.