If your cells need to respond rapidly to a changing environment, would you want their effect to be short- or long-lived? WHY?

The environments in which cells grow often change rapidly. For example, cells may consume all of a particular food source and must utilize others. To survive in a changing world, cells evolved mechanisms for adjusting their biochemistry in response to signals indicating environmental change. The adjustments can take many forms, including changes in the activities of preexisting enzyme molecules, changes in the rates of synthesis of new enzyme molecules, and changes in membrane-transport processes.

Initially, the detection of environmental signals occurred inside cells. Chemicals that could pass into cells, either by diffusion through the cell membrane or by the action of transport proteins, and could bind directly to proteins inside the cell and modulate their activities.