{"id":238233,"date":"2026-06-03T02:29:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/a-new-origin-story-for-multicellular-life-points-to-physics-not-genes-alone"},"modified":"2026-06-03T02:29:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T07:29:42","slug":"a-new-origin-story-for-multicellular-life-points-to-physics-not-genes-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/a-new-origin-story-for-multicellular-life-points-to-physics-not-genes-alone","title":{"rendered":"A new origin story for multicellular life points to physics, not genes alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-origin-story-for-multicellular-life-points-to-physics-not-genes-alone3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How did life make the leap from single cells to coordinated, multicellular organisms? And how do genetically identical cells still perform a version of that feat every time an embryo begins to take shape?<\/p>\n<p>In a new Perspective paper appearing in the journal <i>Nature Biotechnology<\/i>, Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and collaborator Qi Chen of the University of Utah ask one of biology\u2019s oldest questions in a new way. The paper is titled \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41587-026-03161-w\" target=\"_blank\">Decoding the origins of cellular self-organization for engineered biology<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How did life make the leap from single cells to coordinated, multicellular organisms? And how do genetically identical cells still perform a version of that feat every time an embryo begins to take shape? In a new Perspective paper appearing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,3,412,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biological","category-genetics","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}