UO biochemist Ken Prehoda appeared live on an 11-minute segment on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud radio program Thursday, Jan. 14.
The topic was his lab's newly published paper in the journal eLife that suggests a single genetic mutation more than 600 million years ago may have sparked the transition from stand-alone cells to multicellular organisms such as animals.
Prehoda, director of the UO's Institute of Molecular Biology, also was interviewed by the Washington Post for a story published Monday, Jan. 11. The research also drew coverage by Discover magazine with an online story.
“It was a shock,” Prehoda told the Washington Post about the discovery. “If you asked anyone on our team if they thought one mutation was going to be responsible for this, they would have said it doesn’t seem possible.”
For the full Washington Post story, see “Startling new finding: 600 million years ago, a biological mishap changed everything.”
See Discover magazine's story, which went deeper into the science: "A Single Mutation May Have Sparked Multicellular Life."
The paper in eLife also is described in a story in Around the O: “A mutation, a protein combo, and life went multicellular” at http://around.uoregon.edu/content/mutation-protein-combo-and-life-went-multicellular.