Colossal Biosciences Is Growing Chickens In a 3D-Printed Artificial Eggshell (technologyreview.com) 36
Colossal Biosciences says it has grown chickens inside 3D-printed artificial eggshells. "The company says the egg technology could help conserve at-risk bird species," reports MIT Technology. "It could also play a role in a project to re-create the extinct giant moa, a flightless 12-foot-tall bird that once lived in New Zealand and laid four-liter eggs, larger than those of any living bird." From the report: The biotech company today claimed it has developed a "fully artificial egg" as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa. But "artificial eggshell" would probably be a better description for the invention. It's an oval-shaped printed lattice, coated inside with a special silicone-based membrane that lets in oxygen, just as a real eggshell does. To generate birds, Colossal took recently laid chicken eggs and carefully poured their contents into the artificial shells, where they continued growing. A window on top lets researchers peek inside. "To see them all moving around in their artificial eggs was absolutely mind blowing," says Andrew Pask, the company's chief biology officer. "You really feel you can grow life outside of the womb."
[...] The work on the artificial eggshell was carried out in Dallas by Colossal's exogenous development team, or Exo Dev. That group is also trying to develop artificial wombs for mammals, starting with marsupials. "We're looking at every single facet of what's happening during a mammalian pregnancy to unpack exactly how we then go about recapitulating that," says Pask. For that team, an artificial eggshell is a relatively quick and easy technical win. That's because chickens are already an example of ex utero development. After an egg is laid, a small embryo sitting on top of the yolk starts growing, drawing nutrients from the yolk, the white, and even the shell, which provides calcium. (Colossal says it has to add ground-up calcium to the artificial eggs.)
In order to create a moa, Colossal will have to genetically alter another type of bird, changing potentially thousands of DNA letters. But so far, chickens are the only bird species that can be genetically engineered. And that's via a tricky process of editing stem cells that produce egg and sperm. Scientists have to add or delete DNA letters from these cells and then inject them back into an egg. The resulting bird will carry the genetic changes in its gonads -- and then be able to pass them on. Pask says Colossal's idea is that it could modify avian stem cells enough to produce moa-like sperm or eggs. But then you might have the odd situation of a chicken laying an egg with a moa embryo inside it. "You would have chickens making moa egg and moa sperm. But it's still a chicken egg," he says.
[...] The work on the artificial eggshell was carried out in Dallas by Colossal's exogenous development team, or Exo Dev. That group is also trying to develop artificial wombs for mammals, starting with marsupials. "We're looking at every single facet of what's happening during a mammalian pregnancy to unpack exactly how we then go about recapitulating that," says Pask. For that team, an artificial eggshell is a relatively quick and easy technical win. That's because chickens are already an example of ex utero development. After an egg is laid, a small embryo sitting on top of the yolk starts growing, drawing nutrients from the yolk, the white, and even the shell, which provides calcium. (Colossal says it has to add ground-up calcium to the artificial eggs.)
In order to create a moa, Colossal will have to genetically alter another type of bird, changing potentially thousands of DNA letters. But so far, chickens are the only bird species that can be genetically engineered. And that's via a tricky process of editing stem cells that produce egg and sperm. Scientists have to add or delete DNA letters from these cells and then inject them back into an egg. The resulting bird will carry the genetic changes in its gonads -- and then be able to pass them on. Pask says Colossal's idea is that it could modify avian stem cells enough to produce moa-like sperm or eggs. But then you might have the odd situation of a chicken laying an egg with a moa embryo inside it. "You would have chickens making moa egg and moa sperm. But it's still a chicken egg," he says.
Do you want raptors? (Score:1)
Because this is how you get raptors.
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I mean, yeah.
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That is the goal, yes.
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Me want. Yes.
Re: Do you want raptors? (Score:3)
Look up the Haast Eagle. It use to hunt the young of a Moa but their young are the same size as a kid...
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No, it isn't. We do not have dinosaur DNA because it degrades completely within 10 million years. The last dinos were living 66 million years ago if we do not count birds.
On the other hand, if you are Christian nutjob, you figure humans rode dinosaurs and had dinosteaks on the barbie. However, the Flintstones was not a documentary (hat tip to Lewis Black). The easiest path is to rechristen chickens as dinosaurs, pluck half their feathers, and teach them to roar. Extra credit if you can get them to be venomo
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Because this is how you get raptors.
At this point? Why the hell not? If we're going to create a dystopian hellscape, we just as well have some legit predators around that will kill indiscriminately. Think how entertaining it would be to turn on the news and see a "flock" of raptors storming Washington, D.C.
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These are the same braggarts (Score:3)
who pretend they've resurrected the dire wolf. Not sure I take their claims 100% seriously.
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According to the NPR story yesterday, they won't have an animal like a moa, they'll have a modified pigeon, in the same way they didn't have an animal like a dire wolf, they had a regular wolf with an odd color of fur.
While they've done some impressive work, they overstate it. By a lot.
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This is for the battery hen supply chain (Score:2)
Bullshit: "The company says the egg technology could help conserve at-risk bird species,"
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How often do we encounter endangered bird embryos that lack eggshells?
I can see how this technology might be used to revive extinct species, but the claim that it helps endangered species is nonsense.
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I about died laughing reading your post. You basically said, we can't help endangered species unless we first kill them all off BUT THEN we could help them because they are extinct.
Look at the reply below by zephvark...
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The purpose of the artificial eggshell is to be used with an artificially created embryo, which didn't come from an ovary and therefore lacks a shell. This would be a step to revive an avian species for which we synthesise the DNA.
Endangered species OTOH need habitat preservation. They have no use for substitute eggshells, indeed, unless they disappear and we have to revive them from the last DNA samples available.
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Apparently, some people have missed the point. The fake eggshells would allow embryos to be created en masse outside of the birds.
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Create the embryo? Synthesize the embryo? Artificial embryo?
Is it actually a Moa, or just a chicken with a bit of a growth spurt?
So, mass-produced cloned engineered embryos (including the popular modified Avian Flu feature!)?
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Artificial wombs are coming (Score:2)
I know that's a hell of difference.
An order of magnitude at least.
But it's matter of time they do a similar concept for mammals, building artificial wombs instead of artificial eggshells.
And then, use it for humans will be only a moral issue, not a technical one.
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Back in 2017 a different group succeeded in enabling a goat fetus to grow in an artificial womb: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Now, Colossal claims their about 99% finished developing artificial womb tech: https://decrypt.co/368543/arti... [decrypt.co]
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I suspect that there are lots of ways, including some surprises, of getting the problem wrong to some degree and introducing nasty developmental issues; so I could see an IRB having very plausible objections to the "eh, we'll keep pumping out flipper babies until we trial and error our way to what an embryo requires to develop a brain stem properly!" R but, if for sake of argument, you had a system that actually worked wouldn't that basi
Hmmm (Score:2)
Cut and replace, is NOT all you need (Score:2)
Do bio-sciences have the tools to build DNA, one letter at a time? To date, DNA editing sounds very hit and miss: With a, say, 40% success rate, this engineering would cost millions.
If a moa embryo has to grow for, say, eight weeks, a chicken egg-sized yolk will cause starvation and death. Also, the moa embryo will quickly outgrow the chicken egg.
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