Here’s a new book on the topic (Hachette 2023):
I’ve written about the “electric cell” here and here, describing how electric currents in cell membranes transmit information through an “electric code.” I’ve also written about “water wires” and cable bacteria. Biologists have long known about the membrane potential of an individual cell, which measures about -70 millivolts, due to ionic separations. They have known that neurons transmit ionic voltages down their membranes. Now, recent discoveries are showing that we must expand our exploration of bioelectricity to the whole body. – David Coppedge (March 15, 2023)
Bioelectricity vs DNA – what they do:
“We would call this intelligence.”
Also:
Collective Intelligence in Unconventional Spaces with Michael Levin:
As fascinating as it is, this series of discoveries of some of the electric field-related organizing machinery of fetal development doesn’t really come anywhere near answering the most glaringly obvious question: how and where is this electronic mechanism and its imprinted structural patterns encoded in the sperm and egg so as to go on generation after generation with modification. Logic would say it must be in the nucleus, in the genome in the form of DNA. But it doesn’t look like the total information storage capacity of the genome is sufficient for this staggering amount of data.
I think this is an important discovery, but it isn’t as fundamental as its proponents would claim, since it still doesn’t answer the mystery of embryonic development, of where the structural information is stored and retrieved and decoded. This work has certainly revealed some of the mechanisms underlying many of the later stages of embryonic development, but not the core of the story.
Revolutionary!
When Levin disturbs the head-tail electrical gradient of worms, a two-headed worm results. But what is it that molds a two-headed worm into a coherent organism? Something is doing its utmost to make the sheer impossible work. As always in life, we see a mysterious principle at work that strives for and establishes mind-boggling coherence.
Something makes a novel(!) coherent thing from two incoherent sets of anatomical information. Amazing.
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This is a good read:
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/10/morphogenesis-coding-for-shape/
Hmm! I suggest folks take a look at the primary literature.
Review paper on bioelectricity (1st of 3 parts)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610722001304
Introduction from Wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectricity
I should have twigged this has been discussed at The Skeptical Zone.
http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/bioelectrics/
Levin highlights the complete failure of the ‘bottom-up’ approaches of Darwinian materialism to provide any coherent explanation for how the morphology, and/or body plan, of an organism is generated, i.e. He states, “A complementary top- down understanding of the information-processing and computation carried out by cells during development and regeneration is largely missing.,,,” and “Tools for bridging the gap between molecular detail and large-scale outcomes, targeting the algorithms and information content that could enable efficient control of anatomy, have not been built.,,,” and “Top-down approaches have not been attempted to date,,” and “The morphogenetic code (Fig. 2) is a large problem; it requires new technical capabilities and new conceptual insights, not simply more molecular “omics” data.”,,,
Although Levin hopes to someday elucidate how ‘bottom-up’ Darwinian evolution can possibly achieve top-down control of an organism’s morphology, and/or body plan, there are two major problems for anyone who hopes to explain how top-down control is achieved via ‘bottom-up’ Darwinian evolution.
Number 1, we already know, via computers, that only immaterial minds have the capacity, via the infusion of immaterial information into computers, to achieve top-down control of a computer system.
Number 2, Darwinists hold that an organism’s morphology, and/or body plan, is reducible to DNA, (and/or to some other material particulars). Yet, the failure of the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain an organism’s ‘top-down’ morphology, and/or body plan is achieved, via ‘bottom-up’ materialistic explanations, occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
The following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that “even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour”,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
In short, although Levin and others hope that a bottom-up materialistic explanation for how an organism achieves its ‘top-down’ morphology, will someday be forthcoming, their hope is forlorn. It is now proven, via Godel’s incompleteness, that there NEVER will be a ‘complete’ bottom-up materialistic explanation for how any organism’s particular morphology in achieved.
Only ‘top-down’ intelligent design remains viable as to explaining how any organism might achieve its particular morphology, and/or body plan.