>>11238834There are mechanisms that can "guide" evolution a little. Actually, quite a lot, but for example: our genes that code for antibodies don't actually contain antibodies for every antigen. Our lymphocytes can "hypermutate" these genes and then the lymphocyte that produces best fitting antibodies is multiplied. Not sure how that works, though, someone would have to chime in.
The main source of randomness in all life are mutations caused either by mutagens (like UV radiation messing up DNA) or DNA polymerase fucking up and inserting wrong nucleotides, too many nucleotides. This is used in labs to introduce mutations into DNA, because if we mutate some gene and make it useless, we can sometimes infer its function by looking at what we broke.
