Transition from single celled to multi cellular

[TheDeafPianoTuner]

Hi, this is a topic I'm interested in knowing more about. I found a few things on a brief google/youtube search, the jist of it that I got was that single celled organisms began to band together, but I am still struggling to understand how that eventually got to what we have today with a multicellular organism, which starts off as a single cell, and as it divides the cells become more specialized (even that process I am still trying to grasp but I think I kinda get the idea).

If anyone has any links to articles / videos (preferably videos with pictures I like that!) I would be interested. Or if its something simple that I'm just not getting and you can explain to me I'd appreciate that too

Thanks!

[Mermaid]

Listen to a TED talk by Bonnie Bassler called "How Bacteria Talk".
Her research concerns cell-to-cell communication, and it sheds light on how cells can organize and specialize to become organisms. I totally geeked out when I discovered her, she's my hero.

[Mermaid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWurAmtf78

Here's a link to it.

[Alex K]

Some animals such as tardigrades are interesting here because they have a fixed number of cells which I found very fascìnating.

It might also be interesting in this context to read up on siphonophores and other "colony" organisms.

[TheDeafPianoTuner]

Listen to a TED talk by Bonnie Bassler called "How Bacteria Talk".
Her research concerns cell-to-cell communication, and it sheds light on how cells can organize and specialize to become organisms. I totally geeked out when I discovered her, she's my hero.

Thank you! That video was fantastic. 

I am starting slowly to get the picture, but what I would like (if it's out there) is some theory on the different stages that might have happened.

Edit: You know I feel kinda stupid now... I kept looking at these obscure articles but the wikipedia page on multicellular organisms has a nice break down of the different theories lol XD Reading up on that now...

[Mermaid]

You shouldn't feel stupid. Biology is so complex!

[Anomalocaris]

Hi, this is a topic I'm interested in knowing more about. I found a few things on a brief google/youtube search, the jist of it that I got was that single celled organisms began to band together, but I am still struggling to understand how that eventually got to what we have today with a multicellular organism, which starts off as a single cell, and as it divides the cells become more specialized (even that process I am still trying to grasp but I think I kinda get the idea).

If anyone has any links to articles / videos (preferably videos with pictures I like that!) I would be interested. Or if its something simple that I'm just not getting and you can explain to me I'd appreciate that too

Thanks!

I am afraid there is nothing that is very simple without glossing over uncertainties.  The truth is while we have several working hypothesis of how multicellularity arose, there are many attributes of multicellular organisms, some at fundamental cellular and biochemistry level, for which the available working hypothesis do not yet offer good and consistent explanation.   So it is well possible that in further researching the origins of these attributes, we would be compelled to think anew.