To front-load evolution is an attempt to design future states through the present. To accomplish this, future evolutionary events would be fundamentally dependent on the originally designed state that has in some way propagated across deep time. While one might be tempted to believe that millions of years of evolutionary noise would drown out the design signal from the past, research in evolutionary biology indicates otherwise.

Carol Kaesuk Yoon provides a useful summary of this research entitled From a Few Genes, Life’s Myriad Shapes (HT to Joy at Telic Thoughts). There are several excerpts from this story that can be used to highlight the growing plausibility of designing through evolution.

1. For starters, evo-devo researchers are finding that the evolution of complex new forms, rather than requiring many new mutations or many new genes as had long been thought, can instead be accomplished by a much simpler process requiring no more than tweaks to already existing genes and developmental plans.

Note that conventional non-teleological views of evolution came with an expectation - new forms would require many new mutations or many new genes. Yet what we now find is that because of the architecture of life, evolution instead tweaks what it was handed. If novel forms can be spawned by making minor modifications in already existing genes and developmental plans, then front-loading is clearly plausible. Yet this need not be the case. The original thinking could have turned out to be correct, where novel forms required the spawning of an array of novel genes. Unless those novel genes were somehow front-loaded to appear, the thesis of front-loading would be fatally wounded. In other words, what if current evolutionary research could be characterized as follows:

For starters, evo-devo researchers are finding that the evolution of complex new forms, rather than being accomplished by a simple processes requiring no more than tweaks to already existing genes and developmental plans as had long been thought, instead require many new mutations and many new genes.

Such a scenario would not be nearly as friendly to front-loading, as it would mean that evolution typically had to come up with significant information that was not endowed in the original cells. The blind watchmaker would simply be stumbling upon some noise that turned out the be workable for immediate benefits.

2. Stranger still, researchers are finding that the genes that can be tweaked to create new shapes and body parts are surprisingly few. The same DNA sequences are turning out to be the spark inciting one evolutionary flowering after another. “Do these discoveries blow people’s minds? Yes,” said Dr. Sean B. Carroll, biologist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “The first response is ‘Huh?’ and the second response is ‘Far out.’ ”

Once again, we see the non-teleological perspective did not prepare scientists for our deeper understanding of evolution. Evolution is largely about exploiting and tweaking what it was handed.

3. The development of an organism — how one end gets designated as the head or the tail, how feet are enticed to grow at the end of a leg rather than at the wrist — is controlled by a hierarchy of genes, with master genes at the top controlling a next tier of genes, controlling a next and so on. But the real interest for evolutionary biologists is that these hierarchies not only favor the evolution of certain forms but also disallow the growth of others, determining what can and cannot arise not only in the course of the growth of an embryo, but also over the history of life itself.

Here is an important theme to grasp. Evolution is not only constrained by the architecture of life, but it is this very architecture that suggests significant aspects of evolution might be under intrinsic control. The hierarchy of genes help populations “choose” their evolutionary fate and from here we need only contemplate that hierarchies can be chosen.

4. “It’s been said that classical evolutionary theory looks at survival of the fittest,” said Dr. Scott F. Gilbert, a developmental biologist at Swarthmore College. By looking at what sorts of organisms are most likely or impossible to develop, he explained, “evo-devo looks at the arrival of the fittest.”

“Looks like” arguments are crucial to any investigation and here we get a better and better perspective on evolution, where life may be designed such that the “fittest” have been pre-chosen and simply wait for the opportunity to arrive on the scene.

5. Evo-devo has also begun to shine a light on a phenomenon with which evolutionary biologists have long been familiar, the way in which different species will come up with sometimes jaw-droppingly similar solutions when confronted with the same challenges.

Among the placental mammals of the Americas and the marsupials of Australia, for example, have evolved the same sorts of animals independently: beasts that burrowed, loping critters that grazed, creatures that had long snouts for eating ants, and versions of wolf.

Yet another piece of the puzzle falls into place. The commonality of convergent evolution not only supports the plausibility of front-loading, but may be a consequence of front-loading.

So what might we have here? Life is designed to facilitate evolution, evolution may be under some form of intrinsic control, and evolution draws similar solutions when confronted by similar challenges. In some way, evolution has been programmed. Or better yet, evolution is a program.