Science breakthrough paves way to bringing dodo birds back from extinct: See how it will be done
Long-dead dodos could be back in as little as five years, with Melbourne scientists playing a role in the bird’s de-extinction. The billionaire behind the radical project explains how it will be done.
Dodo birds could be back from the dead in as little as five years, with Melbourne scientists playing a role in the radical de-extinction project.
In a huge scientific breakthrough, pigeon primordial germ cells (PGCs) have been successfully grown for the first time in history, enabling sterile eggs from genetically modified chickens to be used for Nicobar pigeon surrogates, paving the way to resurrecting the dodo bird.
The Nicobar pigeon is the closest non-extinct relative of the large flightless dodo, which has become the subject of cartoons and jokes since it disappeared in the last half of the 1600s — with “gone the way of the dodo” a common saying to describe something becoming obsolete.
Global de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences — led by Texas billionaire entrepreneur Ben Lamm — has successfully created a flock of the first fully gene-edited chickens to lay the sterile host eggs.
In an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun, Lamm said dodo chicks were potentially just a few years away.
“I think in the next five to seven years we could see a dodo, which would be incredible,” he said.
Lamm added he had spent time discussing the project and his other de-extinction plans with Aussie actor Luke Hemsworth, while they fished together.
Australian mega stars, Chris, Liam and Luke Hemsworth, were all investors in Colossal and “very big conservationists”, he said.
Meanwhile, famous New Zealand film maker Peter Jackson had toured the Colossal labs just this month in connection with another of its project, the potential de-extinction of the more than three metre high, wingless moa bird, Lamm said.
“They’re all involved, and like all of our investors, not just our celebrity investors, they have a favourite species, a favourite project,” he said, adding that for the Hemsworths it was the resurrection of the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).
While most of the dodo work was taking place in Dallas, Texas, scientists at Colossal’s new Melbourne University headquarters were collaborating on the project, under the leadership of the company’s new chief biology officer, Melburnian Professor Andrew Pask, Lamm said.
“We’ve been working over the last few years (with The University of Melbourne) and buying more and more of his (Prof Pask’s) team’s Melbourne lab,” Lamm said.
“It’s a very integrated team — not segmented to Australia or Texas … some of our bio teams are located in Melbourne — it is very collaborative.”
The company – which earlier this year revealed it had created dire wolf puppies using ancient DNA — after the species went extinct nearly 13,000 years ago — announced it’s dodo de-extinction progress on Wednesday night.
To make a dodo bird, Colossal’s avian team will inject modified Nicobar pigeon PGCs into developing chicks, so they carry pigeon cells rather than chicken cells.
This meant a chicken could lay an egg that hatched into a pigeon, creating the opportunity to “bring back dodo relatives and eventually the dodo itself”, Colossal said.
“Until now, we didn’t know if pigeon primordial germ cell creation was going to take one year or 10, because it’s only been done in geese and chickens before,” Lamm said.
“This is only the third species ever to have primordial germ cells made for birds (and) is very, very complicated. We did it in about 18 months, which is faster than we anticipated.
“We now have the PGCs and we have also created the transgenic birds that will give birth, from a serious perspective, to dodos … we’ve made a lot of progress in 18 months so I’m very pleased with that (but) there is still a lot of (gene) editing to go.”
However, it was highly unlikely dinosaurs could ever be resurrected, Jurassic Park style, using similar methods because “there is no dino DNA to work with”, Lamm said.
“The likelihood that we get 65 million-year-old DNA, I don’t like to say the word impossible, but it’s about as close to impossible as it gets,” he said.
“So I don’t see dinosaurs in the future.”
Lamm said many people would feel disappointed that Colossal had put a dampener on bringing back dinosaurs, but such a project would face too many hurdles.
“Amber is not a great DNA storage vessel, even though the (Jurassic Park) movie says it was — it’s very porous. It was in hot, wet places, which is not great for DNA,” he said.
The oldest DNA so far worked with was 1.5 million-years-old, from a woolly mammoth, Lamm said.
Colossal said new funding of $120m had been secured to enable the expansion of its avian genetics group, which would be used for conservation efforts, research into exotic and endangered bird species and “the world-changing acceleration of the dodo project”.
It had also formed the Mauritius dodo advisory committee, to eventually aid in the bird’s rewilding in its country of origin.
The path to species’ de-extinction includes transforming an edited cell into a living organism.
For mammals, this process involves somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is commonly known as cloning, but because of the size and opacity of avian eggs — and the fact they are laid after the embryo starts to develop — it is not currently possible to clone birds and a different technology needed in order to pass genetic modifications on to the next generation.
That path involves culturing and editing PGCs, which can then become the sperm and eggs used to produce the next generation of birds.
By fertilising modified eggs with modified sperm, the gene changes can be passed on.
Lamm anticipates backlash from some in the science community, who will point out any chicks born through Colossal’s process will not be true dodos, as the dire wolf puppies were not true dire wolves.
And he’s OK with that.
“I’m a big believer in freedom of speech, which is probably weird here in America,” he said.
“But if the masses’ view is that it has the ancient DNA of a dodo, it walks like a dodo (and) it serves the ecological function of a dodo — it has the lost genes that made a dodo a dodo, it literally has the things that have been lost through time, then most people just view it as a dodo.”
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Originally published as Science breakthrough paves way to bringing dodo birds back from extinct: See how it will be done
