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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
Biotech firm announces ‘pivotal step’ in effort to bring back the
dodo
By Katie Hunt, CNN
Updated:
9:56 PM EDT, Wed September 17, 2025
Source: CNN
A plan to genetically engineer a version of the dodo, a that
disappeared 400 years ago and became the poster child for extinction,
has made some headway, according to Texas-based biotechnology firm
Colossal Biosciences.
The company’s scientists said they have succeeded in culturing
specialized cells from the rock dove — better known as the humble
pigeon. They plan to use the same or similar techniques to culture
cells from the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon,
which is from the same family of birds.
Colossal is years away from its long-term goal of creating a living,
walking approximation of the dodo that would be indistinguishable from
its extinct forerunner, but it described the advance as a “pivotal
step.”
“This is the really important step for the dodo project, but also for
bird conservation, more broadly,” said Beth Shapiro, Colossal’s
chief science officer. “This was a negating step for the dodo
project. We needed this in order to move on, and now that we have it,
really, we’re off and running.”
The company sparked excitement, as well as controversy, when it
announced the birth of in April. Colossal scientists said they had
resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using
ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic
makeup of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction.
Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the thylacine —
better known as the Tasmanian tiger — and another flightless bird,
the moa, are also underway.
Colossal also announced Wednesday that it had raised $120 million in
additional funding for its work for a total of $555 million since
launching in September 2021.
However, the techniques necessary to bring back a bird such as the dodo
are different from those the company used to create dire wolves because
birds develop in an egg and can’t be cloned in the same way as
mammals, making the process more challenging.
“So with birds, the slowest part of this process is that we have to
make two generations. We can’t clone the cells, so we have to make
moms and the dads separately and then breed them in order to get both
copies of the gene to be modified,” Shapiro said. “That is pretty
slow.”
Culturing a germ of hope
Colossal’s Wednesday announcement revealed its scientists have
figured out a way to grow a vital type of cell, known as a primordial
germ cell, which acts as a precursor of egg and sperm cells, from the
rock dove (Columba livia), better known as the common pigeon that lives
in cities around the world.
The company said it focused on the rock pigeon because the bird is
widely bred and distantly related to the dodo. Scientists have
previously been able to culture primordial germ cells, or PGCs, of
chickens and geese, a technique that has been used to create a .
“The first cell culture recipe was for chicken PGCs, and was
published nearly 20 years ago,” Anna Keyte, Colossal’s avian
species director, said in a news release.
“Unfortunately, that recipe has not worked on any other bird species
tested, even closely related species like quail. Colossal’s discovery
of a recipe for pigeons dramatically expands avian reproductive
technologies and is the foundation for our dodo work.”
The team tested more than 300 recipes before happening on the right
combination of growth factors, molecules and metabolites that allowed
the pigeon germ cells to grow for 60 days. Details of the research,
which hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed, were published Wednesday.
Shapiro said the next steps would be to attempt to use the cells to
create live rock pigeons birthed by a surrogate chicken, as a proof of
concept.
At the same time, Colossal is using a similar culture to grow the
primordial germ cells of the Nicobar pigeon, which is more closely
related to the dodo. The company noted that it has established a
breeding colony of the birds in Texas and begun to collect primordial
germ cells.
Beyond that, Colossal would need to be able to edit the germ cells of
the Nicobar pigeon with dodo traits, based on genomic information about
the extinct bird preserved in museum specimens. Then scientists would
inject the edited Nicobar pigeon PGCs into the embryos of regular
chickens — roosters and hens — that have been genetically modified
not to make their own germ cells. Chickens are preferable to pigeons as
surrogates because as flightless birds they are easier to keep and
because scientists already know how to genetically engineer them to be
sterile, the company said, making them more suitable to the task.
The ultimate goal is that the edited Nicobar pigeon PGCs will continue
to develop into functional eggs and sperm, and when the offspring of
those modified roosters and hens hatch, the resulting chicks’ eggs
and sperms cells will contain the Dodo-like genetic traits.
“Together, these advances — pigeon PGC culture and gene-edited
chickens that do not make their own PGCs — set the stage for using
surrogate chickens to help bring back dodo relatives, and eventually
the dodo itself,” the company said in a statement.
That whole process will take at least five to seven years, said Ben
Lamm, the company’s CEO.
Questioning ‘de-extinction’ claims
Critics say that while Colossal’s researchers are advancing the field
of genetic engineering, it’s not truly possible to resurrect an
extinct animal — any attempt could only create a genetically
modified, hybrid species. Suggesting otherwise risks undermining the
urgency of protecting existing species and ecosystems, according to
conservationists.
The company has said its aim is not to bring back something that’s
100% genetically identical to an extinct species but to create
functional copies with key traits.
“Dodos belonged to the pigeon and dove family. So, to the extent that
dodos shared many genes in common with the Nicobar pigeon, in theory it
would mean the scientists only have to insert the dodo-unique genes
into the germ cell, or edit the pigeon genes to make them dodo-like.
This could produce a dodo-like bird,” said Scott
MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility
for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario.
However, he said it is impossible to bring back extinct species, as
these animals were far more than a set of genes. “During development
our genome interacts with parental genomes, hormones and the
environment such that genes are turned on or off in complex ways that
we cannot know and cannot repeat for an extinct species,” he noted.
“Although it is impressive genetic engineering to insert genes from
extinct species into a current species, it is hyperbole to call it
de-extinction.”
Wider applications for Colossal’s work
The new technology developed by Colossal has valuable potential
applications in avian conservation, particularly in areas where
existing bird populations have little genetic variation, according to
Cock van Oosterhout, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the
University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences in the
United Kingdom. For van Oosterhout, however, the real utility is not in
resurrecting the dodo, but in applying the company’s findings to help
species recover.
Modifying the genes of endangered species could help them adapt better
to declining habitats or diseases that pose a threat, said van
Oosterhout, who has received a donation from Colossal for his work on
the endangered pink pigeon.
“Can we now find the resistant variant, maybe in an historic sample,
or maybe in a very closely related species that we know is resistant to
a particular pathogen, and can we edit this back into the general
population?” van Oosterhout asked.
Colossal’s “Jurassic Park-style flamboyant science” attracts
funders with deep pockets who wouldn’t ordinarily be interested in
biodiversity conservation, allowing the company to solve problems that
have long eluded many academic researchers, van Oosterhout added.
However, genome editing is just one small piece of a much larger puzzle
that is complex to solve, he said. “What we need to do as a society
is really prevent extinction, prevent habitat loss. Technology can’t
solve the biodiversity crisis. It might save a few species, but it’s
not a magic bullet.”
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