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Modelling the Transport of Nutrients in Early Animals

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Abstract

The single-celled ancestors of multi-cellular animals (metazoans) did not need to transport nutrients between cells, but this ability is vital for modern animals. How could intercellular nutrient transport have begun? And how did this influence the early evolution of animals? In this hypothesis, I suggest that nutrients could have passed directly between the cytoplasm of conjoined cells in early compacted cell-balls, along the plane of the closed epithelium. This would have limited early animals to the size and form of modern embryos. The mechanisms that indirectly transport nutrients between discrete cells, via the extracellular fluid within the body-space, are modelled to have evolved sequentially; so comparison of nutrient transport processes could provide evidence of any early divergences of phyla. When the last of the indirect intercellular transport processes for essential nutrients had been developed, the extracellular fluid within the body-space would have contained all necessary nutrients. Then the epithelium could have greatly expanded, and cells lived and divided within the body-space. This development of nutrient transport processes would have enabled animals to greatly increase in size and complexity.

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Acknowledgements

I thank C Beaumont, OA Crimmen, AR Milner and IK Petrie for helpful discussions, and RA Beaumont, KME Chu, B Hallgrimsson, IK Petrie, MG Waugh and AS Wilkins for help with the preparation of the manuscript. I also thank the Medical Illustration Unit, Royal Free & University College Medical School (Royal Free Campus) for creating the figures.

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  1. Department of Medicine, Royal Free & University College Medical School, Royal Free Campus, Rowland Hill Street, London, NW3 2PF, UK

    N. J. Beaumont

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Beaumont, N.J. Modelling the Transport of Nutrients in Early Animals. Evol Biol 36, 256–266 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11692-008-9047-2

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