Big brain evolution: our special gene is identified (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, January 10, 2019, 19:29 (2142 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Thank you for this and for all the other articles you have posted today. If the human sense of smell is this complex, imagine what dogs’ are like. Theirs is said to be at least 1,000 times more efficient than ours! I like the expression “cooperative design”, since cell cooperation is integral to the whole process, and cell memory is another important factor for those who advocate autonomous cellular intelligence.

I still view it as implanted intelligence from intelligent information. From the outside no different than your proposal.

Under “Biological complexity: plant growth…”
QUOTE: "Dr Mähönen's team combined individual cell lineage tracing and molecular genetics to show early-stage xylem cells, which had not yet differentiated, take over as the organiser and direct adjacent vascular cells to divide and function as stem cells: "We showed that this secondary development is a tightly controlled process and revealed a dynamic nature of the organiser.”

DAVID: Automaticity in growth by feedback loops to control transcription factors, hormones and microRNA. This is how cells work in everyday projects.

dhw: Even plants require a dynamic organiser, and in other posts we have seen how they communicate with one another. The ability to cope with changing conditions and potential threats suggests a form of intelligence – nothing like our own, but nevertheless entailing the processing and communication of information and the making of decisions. Unquestionably much of this is automatic, just as it is in humans whose perceptions and implementation of decisions involve automatic processes, but that does not mean the dynamic organiser is an automaton.

Struggle with automaticity all you want, but this is a study in early development: "focused on the early (primary) stage of vascular development" is a quote from the article. In early growth of any embryonic stage there must be automaticity to produce the expected adults! Otherwise there would be a plethora of aberrant forms born or produced as plants.