The company Colossal creates an artificial egg to incubate extinct birds like the giant moa
The company assures that it has already hatched a chick with this technology, which could be used to recover extinct species
BarcelonaThe North American company Colossal Biosciences, whose goal is to de-extinguish species, has announced that it has developed an artificial egg system capable of allowing the complete development of bird embryos outside a biological shell. According to the company, the technology has already been successfully validated with chicken embryos, which would have completed the incubation process up to hatching.
This privately funded biotechnology company maintains that this advance could open the door to the de-extinction of extinct birds, 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.
One of the main technical challenges, explain the experts, is that these birds today have no compatible living species that can act as a "surrogate mother". Therefore, the new system aims to replace natural incubation with an artificial permeable membrane that allows the necessary gas exchange and adequate oxygenation for the embryo to develop.
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 him, 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 up, production would be more efficient," he assures.
Despite this, experts advocate for prudence and scientific evidence. Lalueza-Fox warns that it will still have to be demonstrated 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
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 still far from materializing.
