One-celled life possessed tools for going multicellular

Amoeba uses some of same molecular machinery as more complex organisms

unicellular organism

MOLECULAR TOOLKIT  Capsaspora owczarzaki, a unicellular organism closely related to animals, uses molecular tools shared by multicellular organisms to move through its different life stages.

Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Scaling up from one cell to many may have been a small step rather than a giant leap for early life on Earth.