Colossal Biosciences, the company that is bringing de-extinction into the limelight, has broken new ground by hatching chicks from an artificial egg for the first time. This technology, now proven to successfully support the development of avian embryos, is expected to become a vital component of the company’s endeavor to bring back to life a gargantuan extinct bird, the South Island Giant Moa.
When designing the artificial egg, Colossal’s scientists needed to consider everything that makes a natural egg the perfect environment for an avian embryo to grow. The result? An invention that features a lattice shell with a permeable membrane, allowing just the right amount of oxygen to reach the embryos stored within — and as the embryos flourish inside the artificial egg, scientists are able to watch the whole process unfold.
"The artificial egg provides access to the developing embryo in ways that are not possible inside the [natural] shell," said Andrew Pask, Chief Biology Officer at Colossal, to Discover. "This makes generating genetic manipulation a lot easier and scalable, also being able to understand the process of avian development in a way not seen before. All of these advances increase our capacity for generating healthy genetically engineered birds, which is going to be essential in many conservation programs."
Read More: Red Wolves Went Extinct in 1980, but Their Ghost May Live on in the Coyotes of This Texas Island
Hatching a Plan for Moa De-extinction
Colossal’s artificial egg, according to the company, will be used to benefit avian conservation across the board, but it will be especially necessary for their South Island Giant Moa de-extinction project.
Colossal Biosciences hatched chick.
(Image Courtesy of Colossal Biosciences)
The South Island Giant Moa, which was hunted to extinction in New Zealand by the mid-15th century, was a behemoth of a bird, standing at nearly 12 feet tall and weighing just over 500 pounds, according to Colossal. (https://colossal.com/moa/)
Given the moa’s incredible size, it should come as no surprise that the bird’s eggs were larger than any egg laid by a modern bird. According to a statement from Colossal, moa eggs are estimated to have been about 80 times the volume of a chicken egg and roughly 8 times that of an emu egg.
Since no living bird is large enough to serve as a host for the moa, Colossal wanted to concoct an exogenous solution — one that involved embryonic development outside of a natural egg. The artificial egg that Colossal developed can be scaled to suit the exact needs of their moa de-extinction project.
Designing an Artificial Egg for Embryos
Colossal also had to address another obstacle with their artificial egg: previous attempts to develop embryos outside a natural chicken egg in the 1980s used excess pure oxygen, causing DNA damage and affecting the long-term health of chicks.
Colossal Biosciences chick embryo.
(Image Courtesy of Colossal Biosciences)
The artificial egg, however, is equipped with a 3D-printed lattice shell that has a silicone-based membrane, allowing it to take in oxygen similarly to a natural chicken eggshell. The egg is also mostly transparent, allowing scientists to observe embryos as they develop; when it comes time to use the egg for the moa de-extinction project, they will be able to watch the moa's lost traits materialize in an embryo in real time.
Another key feature of the artificial egg is that the transparent design and controlled environment give scientists access to genome editing during incubation. This could aid avian conservation initiatives by bolstering disease resistance or restoring genetic diversity in bird species that are critically endangered.
A Healthy Brood Of Chicks
The first chicks that have emerged from the artificial egg are now being cared for by Colossal scientists.
Colossal Biosciences team.
(Image Courtesy of Colossal Biosciences)
"The chickens are now fully developed and completely normal and healthy birds...we will continue to monitor their longevity and reproductive capacity as they continue to age and mature — checking for normal life span and reproductive output," Pask told Discover.
As for the future of the artificial egg system, Colossal states that it will make further engineering updates, such as developing a self-hatching lattice structure and robotic-assisted early-stage embryo transfer protocols.
Along with Colossal's other de-extinction projects, like their recently announced goal of bringing an antelope called the bluebuck back from extinction, the moa de-extinction project is still being mapped out; scientists will need to find an ideal surrogate for the moa — from living birds like tinamous, the closest living relatives of moas, or emus, which are closer in size to moas — before attempting to bring the moa's features back to life through genome editing and then incubating an edited embryo within the new artificial egg.
Read More: What Animals Are Going Extinct?
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from Colossal Biosciences: The Moa
