Plasticity and scaling through multinucleation: a key adaptation to challenging environments

Multinucleate cells, single cells containing multiple nuclei in a shared cytoplasm, are found across the eukaryotic tree of life. Having evolved independently in fungi, plants, protists, and animals, they thrive in environments ranging from nutrient-poor deep-sea sediments to dynamic soil microhabitats and host tissues. Multinucleate organization enables spatial specialization without internal partitions and rapid scaling of metabolic or transcriptional capacity, allowing organisms to forage across patchy resources, withstand physical stress, and respond quickly to environmental fluctuations. Yet multinucleation also brings challenges, including diffusion limits, nuclear coordination, and the potential for genetic conflict. Its repeated emergence, often in lineages that have also evolved multicellularity, points to shared cellular, structural, and regulatory prerequisites shaped by ecological pressures. Here, we integrate perspectives from cell biology, ecology, and evolution to demonstrate that multinucleation is not a rare anomaly but a fundamental organizational strategy. Recognizing these systems as adaptive responses to environmental constraints provides a framework for uncovering general principles of cellular organization, evolution of life cycle strategies, and the diversification of complex life.