Obviously a damn lot of cells have an evolutionary reason to receive and transmit signals. Otherwise the whole body dies, and so do the cells. Evolution on the

Obviously a damn lot of cells have an evolutionary reason to receive and transmit signals. Otherwise the whole body dies, and so do the cells. Evolution on the level of multicellular organisms happens on the organism level and not on the cellular level (except in case of cancer) and so multicellular organism cells have incentives to do what is best for the organism as a whole, (and the organism's offspring) and not for the particular cell. Hormones being passed between different parts of the body seem to be the way most communication happen inside the body, and it's definitely not in any cell's long term interest to ignore those signals. Even if the signal orders the cell to shrivel and die. The only way for the DNA in a cell of a multicellular organism to survive long-term, is to create an entirely new organism, and there is a lot of order in the body to make sure that the vast majority of cells that don't fall in line, are killed very, very fast.