Challenges to resurrecting the dodo

 Challenges to resurrecting the dodo

However, the subsequent work that’s needed to resurrect the animal — programming cells from a living relative of the dodo with the lost bird’s DNA — will be significantly more challenging. Shapiro said she hopes to adapt an existing technique used involving primordial germ cells, the embryonic precursors of sperm and eggs, that has already been used to create a chicken fathered by a duck.

The approach involves removing primordial gems cells from an egg, cultivating them in the lab and editing the cells with the desired genetic traits before injecting them back to an egg at the same developmental stage, she explained.

Even if the team is successful in this high-stakes endeavor, they won’t be making a carbon copy of the dodo that lived four centuries ago, but an altered, hybrid form.

However, Shapiro said that perfecting these synthetic biology tools will have wider implications for bird conservation. The techniques could allow scientists to move specific genetic traits between bird species to help protect them as habitats shrink and the climate warms.

“This technology, which works in chickens…. it would be amazing to get this to work in lots of different birds across the bird tree of life because that will be hugely impactful for avian conservation,” Shapiro said.

“If we find that there’s something that provides immunity against a disease that’s hurting a population, and you know what the genetic changes underlying that immunity or that ability to fight off that disease is — maybe we can use these tools to transfer that even between closely related species,” she added.

Mike McGrew, a senior lecturer and personal chair in avian reproductive technologies at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, described the project as a “moon launch for synthetic biology.” His work involves turning commercial egg-laying hens into surrogates for rare chicken breeds revived from frozen primordial germ cells.

“The idea is you have to now be able to do this with pigeon species. And that’s the big, hard part jumping from chicken species, which many labs in the world do, to other bird species,” said McGrew, who is not directly involved in the dodo project but is part of Colossal’s scientific advisory board.

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