摘要
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ass="h3">Summary
Multicellular forms of life have evolved many times, independently giving rise to a diversity of organisms such as animals, plants, and fungi that together comprise the visible biosphere. Yet multicellular life is far more widespread among eukaryotes than just these three lineages. A particularly common form of multicellularity is a social aggregative fruiting lifestyle whereby individual cells associate to form a 鈥渇ungus-like鈥?sorocarp. This complex developmental process that requires the interaction of thousands of cells working in concert was made famous by the 鈥渃ellular slime mold鈥?Dictyostelium discoideum, which became an important model organism []. Although sorocarpic protistan lineages have been identified in five of the major eukaryote groups [], the ubiquitous and globally distributed species Guttulinopsis vulgaris has eluded proper classification. Here we demonstrate, by phylogenomic analyses of a 159-protein data set, that G.聽vulgaris is a member of Rhizaria and is thus the first member of this eukaryote supergroup known to be capable of aggregative multicellularity.
