Bedau, Mark A., John S. McCaskill, Norman H. Packard, and Steen Rasmussen. “Complex organization in multicellularity as a necessity in evolution.” (2000): 103-112.
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By introducing a dynamical system model of a multicellular system, it is shown that an organism with a variety of differentiated cell types and a complex pattern emerges through cell-cell interactions even without postulating any elaborate control mechanism. Such organism is found to maintain a larger growth speed as an ensemble by achieving a cooperative use of resources, than simple homogeneous cells which behave ‘selfishly’. This suggests that the emergence of multicellular organisms with complex organization is a necessity in evolution. According to our theoretical model, there appear multipotent stem cells initially, which exhibit stochastic differentiation to other cell types. With the development and differentiation, both the chemical diversity and complexity of intra-cellular dynamics are decreased, as a general consequence of our system. Robustness of the developmental process is also confirmed.