Hm, well, it would require a "global" approach instead of what currently happens. Which is the opposite, local gradients, local diffusion, local parallel approa

Hm, well, it would require a "global" approach instead of what currently happens. Which is the opposite, local gradients, local diffusion, local parallel approaches. Many times things are being built, remodeled, moved, teared down, packed for moving, and unpacked for use. Everything is at the same time a tool for building bigger things and is just a piece of raw material if something else happens to disassemble it or use it for assembling something bigger. So opposed to that there would need to be some kind of ordering, signaling, queuing, synchronization, etc. Thanks to osmosis building block things are always pretty close when they are needed, and products are always getting spread out evenly too. (And there is a transport network in each cell that helps with those that need some help spreading.) Of course there are certain things that work based on a kind of synchronization, like the waiting for all actin fibers and the two copies of each chromosome during cell division (probably the metaphase) to be in place so they can start pulling apart the cell nucleus (anaphase), and then the daughter cells can separate. Of course this also depends on signals (cyclins). The G1 cyclin slowly accumulates, and unless it's inhibited (by eg. signals get produced when "lack of nutrients" state happens around the cell) it'll start a cascade to ultimately split the cell in two. Similarly there are certain genes that are environmental gradient dependent, usually these work when a stem cell differentiates into something specific. And the stem cell stuff is active because some parts of the DNA is conveniently exposed, certain signaling pathways are active - so the cell reacts to the gradient. And after differentiation those things get put away, locked down, coiled up, broken down, absorbed, etc. Okay, so how could a cell skip all those iterations? It needs to know what to do and when, that's environment dependent (locally signaled by other cells, and sometimes signals arrive from far via special stuff in the blood, eg. hormones). Something like that could be probably implemented in cells. Eg. "simply" enumerating all the functions of a cell and making every process inside it depend on outer signals, and maybe leave the simple accumulators. And when any process is about to start the cell would need to know if it has enough resources to go through with it. This would basically need yet another signaling and computational system. Or, sure, it might just start things and ... fail to finish it in time, but then it needs to disassemble whatever is half-finished. And basically that's already what happens. All the time. And if something is "really needed" it'll be finished fast. (Because signals inhibit things that slow things down, and also maybe slow down the cleanup crew too.)