What does it take to build an animal? Here are the job specifications. A single large cell front-loaded with information and enough energy to finish the job must be able to build an organism made of many diverse parts that all function together to solve the problems of getting resources, responding to the environment, disposing of waste, and reproducing itself.

To make it easy, let’s say the animal is a worm with about one thousand cells. OK, go.

Can’t do it? Neither could I. No one could, because it requires membrane-associated determinants that direct early cell division and the coordinated expression of thousands of genes in a cell-type and developmentally specific pattern. But the lowly nematode C. elegans can do it. It has it down to a science, following the same pattern of cell division and gene expression every time, a pattern that resembles a logic tree. Each cell division is a node in the tree, and as with a logic tree, each division progressively leads to a particular outcome — a baby worm made of particular kinds of cells arranged in a stereotypical way. No waste, no superfluity, just precisely what is needed to make a new worm.

If you’d like to see the logic of C. elegans as it builds itself from the ground up, check out two videos newly released by Discovery Institute — “How to Build a Worm” and “Switched on Worms” — that illustrate the process. It truly is remarkable — every worm follows precisely the same pattern down to the last cell, as if it knew where it was going.

There’s the issue. Where does such elegant, efficient, seeming simplicity come from? No kludgey mess here. Rather, it’s like an Eames chair stripped down to the bare essentials. The logic tree analogy hints at the answer — it came from a designer who knew what was needed and how to get there from the very start.