Comment by inglor_cz

This is quite close to the ideas of Michael Levin, a somewhat famous biologist from Tufts. The goal of his research is a "biological compiler", where you would just enter how many tails, legs and eyes you want a creature to have and hey presto.

He doesn't want to reach this by making edits in DNA, though. He is trying to simply temporarily "activate" the dormant DNA patterns for growing an ear, that were once active in the embryonal phase of the organism, in an adult organism and in a different location. His work indicates that using a correct electrochemical pattern can do this, at least in simpler organisms. He already produced some two-and three-headed worms, tadpoles with five appendages and three eyes etc. IDK how his recent work on mammals is progressing.