Development necessitates evolutionarily conserved factors.

Abstract

Early-stage generalised transcription factors in biological development are often evolutionarily conserved across species. Here, we find for the first time that similar factors functionally emerge in an alternative medium of development. Through comprehensively analysing a Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) model of morphogenesis, we find multiple properties of the hidden units that are functionally analogous to early factors in biological development. We test the generalisation abilities of our model through transfer learning of other morphologies and find that developmental strategies learnt by the model are reused to grow new body forms by conserving its early generalised factors. Our paper therefore provides evidence that nature did not become locked into one arbitrary method of developing multicellular organisms: the use of early generalised factors as fundamental control mechanisms and the resulting necessity for evolutionary conservation of those factors may be fundamental to development, regardless of the details of how development is implemented.