Body Parts Regeneration?

Zebra Fish (Wikipedia)

Two weeks ago, a few of my friends and I got together for a picnic and a new friend was introduced to the group. Why I am telling this story is beacuse this new friend had one leg and lost the other one unexpectedly. Since that day I am more sensitive to the scientific works about body part regeneration and I started to read about the topic. 

I am sure most of you have already heard about the hobby-store owner who sliced his fingertip and it was later fully regenerated with the tissue, nerves, skin and the fingernail when he used a "magic powder", in 2005. You can watch the video that was shown on CBC news in 2008 (below). Since then the topic seemed to be more attractive or more mediatic. Whatever the reason is this is a very important step forward to grow body parts.

Ofcourse, where the story ends science starts! Here are a few links to such scientific studies with different types of living organisms, i.e. Zebra Fish: 
[1] S. Pasqualetti, G. Banfi, and M. Mariotti, “The zebrafish scale as model to study the bone mineralization process,” Journal of Molecular Histology, pp. 1–7, 2012.
[2] J. Itou, H. Kawakami, T. Burgoyne, and Y. Kawakami, “Life-long preservation of the regenerative capacity in the fin and heart in zebrafish,” Biology Open, 2012.
[3] K. Agata and T. Inoue, “Survey of the differences between regenerative and non-regenerative animals,” Development, Growth & Differentiation, 2012.
[4] “MicroRNAs Help Zebrafish Regenerate Fins,” ScienceDaily. [Online]. Available: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080314202107.htm [Accessed: 22-Jul-2012].
[5] Wikipedia contributors, “Zebrafish,” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 22-Jul-2012.
 
Before I conclude, this history is interesting for me for other reasons too, because I believe that we can grow a fully functional tissue with all the nerves, flesh and skin to build non-human robots. Considering that the best nervous system is found in human-body this step can eliminate all the artificial sensor production steps and let us obtain a fully funtional texture.

Artificial intelligence has already went far in terms of responsivity. Bringing together these two is hoped (by myself) to open a new path to manufacture super-intelligent robots.

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