The company Colossal creates an artificial egg to incubate extinct birds like the giant moa

BarcelonaThe North American company Colossal Biosciences, which aims to bring back extinct species, has announced that it has created an artificial incubation platform that allows for the complete development of bird embryos outside a biological shell. According to a company press release — and not a scientific publication — the technology has already been successfully validated with chicken embryos, which reportedly completed the incubation process to hatching without using supplemental oxygen. This privately funded biotechnology company claims that this advance could open the door to the "de-extinction of birds that have gone extinct, such as the giant moa of New Zealand's South Island; a species extinct in the 15th century that could exceed three and a half meters in height and weigh up to 250 kilos.

The genome “is the blueprint, but without a place to build it, it makes no sense” and this artificial egg provides a controlled, scalable, and entirely independent platform from a surrogate mother, states Colossal's Chief Scientific Officer, Andrew Pask, in the same release. Its design is largely transparent to ensure continuous observation of embryonic development and the device is compatible with standard commercial incubators. Furthermore, the company emphasizes, it can be manufactured on a large scale and adapts to eggs of any size.

The debate about 'de-extinction' is reopened

Carles Lalueza-Fox, director of the Natural Sciences Museum of Barcelona and researcher at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC-UPF), considers the development to be "an unprecedented comparable advance", especially for having resolved the permeability of the artificial membrane. According to statements to SMC, the technology could also have biomedical and biotechnological applications: "Transgenic chickens are used to produce proteins with therapeutic functions in egg whites. With this system, if it can be scaled, production would be more efficient," he assures.

Transgenic chickens are an emerging platform for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins in egg whites, including monoclonal antibodies and human cytokines, at a lower cost than conventional mammalian cell culture systems. Nevertheless, experts advocate for caution and scientific evidence. Lalueza-Fox warns that it will still be necessary to demonstrate that the system can be scaled up to allow the development of much larger embryos and raises doubts about the ecological sense of recovering extinct species through genetic modifications of current birds.

Between science and marketing

Shell-less avian cultivation was first attempted in the 1980s, but required large volumes of pure oxygen, which caused DNA damage and affected the animal's long-term health. Colossal Biosciences captured attention last year for the supposed first de-extinction, after the birth of three giant wolves created with genetic modifications derived from DNA found in fossils between 11,500 and 72,000 years old. Not without controversy, but: the project received criticism from experts who understood that they were genetically modified gray wolves, that is, hybrids.Founded in 2021, Colossal Biosciences has become known for its projects to try to "resurrect" extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, or the dodo bird. A scientific ambition that generates fascination and skepticism in equal measure, also among part of the scientific community, which warns of the risk of confusing real technological advances with business promises that are still far from materializing.