Comment by gnramires

Really cool, and although I am not quite up to date on biology research (relevant here), I believe there were exciting results showing mechanisms like electric fields acting as signals for cells to differentiate in some species, i.e. "telling a cell where it is", and supposedly guiding "what it should do/become", etc.. I believe this was a result from studying Axolotls, the amazing self-regenerating (and severely threatened of extinction in nature) salamanders[1].

Side note: if we needed more reasons to conserve the amazing and enormous spectrum of life, one more reason is this kind of discovery that might enable better understanding (and maybe enhancement one day) of cell growth and regeneration in humans. Also showing that biology in many ways is extremely far ahead of what humans can achieve with current technology or will for the foreseeable future (as much as the automata example is very neat, it's nowhere near self-assembling full working and self-reproducing creatures from a compact genetic code!).

It seems you can donate directly to help Axolotl conservation (which again is critically endangered), seems really important if you can help! [2] (although there are of course many other means to help if you're interested in conservation in general!)

[1] https://youtu.be/7cLaU_agj6k?&t=86

[2] https://www.moja.ong/programs/axolotl-habitat-conservation/ https://www.moja.ong/donar/