The Role of Stochasticity in the Evolution of Multicellularity

One of the most fundamental issues in evolutionary biology, and more recently in biological physics, is the nature of transitions from unicellular organisms to multicellular ones. Many questions arise about the fitness advantages of increase in size and cell number, as well as cellular specialization, and these are often addressable from physical points of view. Of particular interest is the fidelity with which uni- and multicellular organisms sense and respond to environmental signals such as chemical concentrations and light intensity. This thesis project will investigate theoretically and possibly experimentally how the processes inherent in multicellular organisms deal with the intrinsic stochasticity in the world around them.