Competency of the Developmental Layer Alters Evolutionary Dynamics in an Artificial Embryogeny Model of Morphogenesis

Biological genotypes do not code directly for phenotypes; developmental physiology is the control layer that separates genomes from capacities ascertained by selection. A key aspect is competency, as cells are not a passive material but descendants of unicellular organisms with complex context-sensitive capabilities. We used an evolutionary simulation in the context of minimal artificial embryogeny to probe the effects of different degrees of cellular competency on evolutionary dynamics. Virtual embryos consisted of a single axis of positional information values provided by cells' genomes, operated upon by an evolutionary cycle in which embryos' fitness was proportional to monotonicity of the axial gradient. Evolutionary dynamics were evaluated in two modes: hardwired "mosaic" development (genotype directly encodes phenotype), and a more realistic mode in which cells interact prior to evaluation by the fitness function ("regulative" development). Even minimal competency with respect to improving their position in the embryo results in better performance of the evolutionary search. Crucially, we observed that as competency of cells masks the raw fitness of the genomes, the phenotypic fitness gains are then mostly due to improvements of cells' developmental problem-solving capacities, not the structural genome. This suggests the existence of a powerful ratchet mechanism: evolution progressively becomes locked in to improvements in the intelligence of its agential substrate, with reduced pressure on the structural genome. A feedback loop in which evolution increasingly puts more effort into the developmental software than perfecting the hardware explains the very puzzling divergence of genome from anatomy in species like planaria, identifies a possible drive for scaling intelligence over time, and suggests strategies for engineering novel systems in silico and in bioengineering.