Digestive System

As we know, life on Earth has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. It is thought that all
life has evolved from a common single celled organism.
a) Explain why there would have been the need for the digestive system to evolve during the
evolution of a single celled organism to a multicellular organism.
b) What types of adaptations or evolutions would be expect to see as the size of the organism
increases.

In the beginning the intracellular digestion of single celled organisms have a central cavity,
functioning as a digestive cavity, has only one opening to the outside; the opening acts both as
a mouth for ingestion and as an anus for egestion.
With the evolution of multicellular organisms came a corresponding evolution of cellular
specialization, resulting in a division of labour among cells; in this way, certain cells became
specialized to perform the function of digestion for the entire organism, that produce the
extracellular digestion allowing organisms to provide enzymes and special structures for the
breaking down of dietary macromolecules with the benefit from a greater variety of food.
This phenomenon allowed other cells to be liberated for other tasks and differentiations while
benefiting from nutrients distributed through the circulation.
As the size of organisms increases would be expected the evolution of more specialized and
complex cell types in order to make possible their life.

References:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/163205/invertebrate-digestivesystem/45301/Evolution-of-cellular-specialization
http://www.biology-questions-and-answers.com/digestion-system.html

Javiera Ruiz Donoso

Group A