How Did Life Become Complex?

The evolution of multicellular life on Earth happened with a number of key transitions from simple organisms to complex. Could the same transitions happen on other worlds? Frank Rosenzweig, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Montana, is looking into such questions over the next five years with funding from the NASA Astrobiology Institute. His lab studies how life evolves “complex traits,” factors that influence everything from lifespan to biodiversity.

Rosenzweig’s previous NASA funding came from the Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program. The first project, initiated in 2007, examined how genetic material (or genomes) evolve in yeast species that were cultured under limited resources. A second project, initiated in 2010, is investigating how founder cells in E. coli genotypes, and the environment in which they evolve, influence the diversity and stability of subsequent populations.