Perry Marshall is an EE/businessman who is a system analyst. Dennis Noble, one of his supporters, is a true biologist who posits that biological systems use feedback to change their function. He says, with no real evidence, that this change goes all the way down to the gene level, a most Lysenko-type pronouncement. If he had stopped at change in gene expression due to outside pressure, I might agree with him.
Have you read this by Noble?
"A central feature of the Integrative Synthesis is a radical revision of the concept of causality in biology. A priori there is no privileged level of causation. This is the principle that I have called the theory of biological relativity. As Werner puts it, 'all levels have an equal contributing value'. Control is therefore distributed, some of which is inherited independently of DNA sequences. The revision of the concept will also recognize the different forms of causality. DNA sequences are best viewed as passive causes, because they are used only when the relevant sequences are activated. DNA on its own does nothing. The active causes lie within the control networks of the cells, tissues and organs of the body." [Denis Noble, "Physiology is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology." Experimental Physiology, Vol.98, Iss.8; April 15, 2013, p.1241]
https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134
The gene regulatory network has been getting a lot of attention:
"When they proposed their theory in 1969, [Roy] Britten and [Eric] Davidson acknowledged that 'little is known... of the molecular mechanisms by which gene expression is controlled in differentiated cells.' Nevertheless, they deduced that such a system must be at work. Given: (1) that tens or hundreds of specialized cell types arise during the development of animals, and (2) that each cell contains the same genome, they reasoned (3) that some control system must determine which genes are expressed in different cells at different times to ensure the differentiation of different cell types from each other—some system-wide regulatory logic must oversee and coordinate the expression of the genome.
"Davidson has dedicated his career to discovering and describing the mechanisms by which these systems of gene regulation and control work during embryological development. During the last two decades, research in genomics has revealed that nonprotein-coding regions of the genome control and regulate the timing of the expression of the protein-coding regions of the genome. Davidson has shown that the nonprotein-coding regions of DNA that regulate and control gene expression and the protein-coding regions of the genome together function as circuits. These circuits, which Davidson calls 'developmental gene regulatory networks' (or dGRNs) control the embryological development of animals."
[Stephen C. Meyer, "Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design." HarperOne, 2013, p.265]
This is Davidson:
"There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way." [Eric H. Davidson, "Evolutionary bioscience as regulatory systems biology." Developmental Biology, Vol.357, Iss.1; Sept 1, 2011, p.40]
Mr. Kalamata