Second coming for the dodo bird after bold science project revealed

The dodo bird could be brought back from the dead by 2032, a team of scientists including some Australians, has announced.

Biotech* company Colossal Biosciences announced in February 2023 that it planned to resurrect the extinct flightless bird and release it in its natural habitat.

In a major breakthrough, the company announced on September 17 that it had successfully grown pigeon primordial germ cells* (PGCs), enabling sterile* eggs from genetically-modified* chickens to be used for Nicobar pigeon surrogates* – the dodo’s closest non-extinct relative.

Once hatched, the crossbred birds would be released into several protected reserves in Mauritius, which was the dodos’ natural habitat before they were driven to extinction 350 years ago.

Colossal chief executive and co-founder, Ben Lamm, said the species’ return as a crossbreed could be less than a decade away.

“Rough ballpark, we think it’s still five to seven years out, but it’s not 20 years out,” Mr Lamm said.

“Our goal is to make enough genetic diversity* engineered into them that we can put them back into the wild where they can truly thrive. So we’re not looking to make two dodos, we’re looking to make thousands.”

Though most of the dodo work has taken place in Dallas, Texas, Mr Lamm told the Herald Sun that scientists at the company’s new Melbourne University headquarters were also collaborating on the project.

“We’ve been working over the last few years and buying more and more of (new chief biology officer Professor Andrew Pask’s) team’s Melbourne lab,” he said.

“It’s a very integrated team – not segmented to Australia or Texas (in the US) … some of our bio teams are located in Melbourne – it is very collaborative.”

The project also, somewhat unexpectedly, is tied to Australian-born global stars Chris, Luke and Liam Hemsworth – all of whom are investors in Colossal and “very big conservationists”, Mr Lamm said.

“They’re all involved, and like of all our investors, not just our celebrity investors, they have a favourite species, a favourite project,” he added, noting the brothers are particularly interested in Colossal plans to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine).

HOW DODOS WILL BE REBORN
To make a dodo bird genetic descendant*, he explained, Colossal team would inject the modified Nicobar pigeon PGCs into developing chicks, so they would carry pigeon rather than chicken cells.

The chicken could then lay an egg that hatched into a pigeon, enabling it to “bring back dodo relatives and eventually the dodo itself”, the company 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,” Mr Lamm told the Herald Sun.

“This is only the third species ever to have primordial germ cells made for birds (and) is very, very complicated. We did it in 18 months, which is faster than 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.”

It comes after Colossal’s first-ever so-called “de-extinction” in April: the birth of three crossbreed dire wolf pups, a species that disappeared 13,000 years ago.

The trio were successfully born using DNA from ancient dire wolf fossils and genes from their closest living relative, the grey wolf.

“Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” Mr Lamm said at the time.

“It was once said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable* from magic’. Today, our team gets to unveil some magic they are working on and its broader impact on conservation.”

Colossal plans to resurrect dodos using a similar method: cloning high-quality cell lines using somatic cell nuclear transfer* into donor egg cells, then transferring them to a surrogate mum.

“The de-extinction of the dire wolf and an end-to-end system for de-extinction is transformative and heralds an entirely new era of human stewardship* of life,” said Colossal scientific adviser and member of its board of observers, Dr Christopher Mason.

“This is an extraordinary technological leap in genetic engineering efforts for both science and for conservation as well as preservation of life, and a wonderful example of the power of biotechnology to protect species, both extant* and extinct.”

Conservation and science aside, the project of bringing lost animal species back from extinction promises to be very big business, with Colossal current valuation estimated at roughly $15 billion.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT DODOS?
Dodos were flightless birds from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. According to Britannica, dodos were first seen by Portuguese sailors in 1507. They had been hunted to extinction by humans and introduced animals by 1681. The dodo has become one of the most well-known cases of human-caused extinction of a species.

Dodos were about 23kg and were larger than a turkey in size, with blue-grey feathers, a big head and a 23cm bill with hooked tip. They had small wings that couldn’t fly and short legs as well as a tuft of curly tail feathers.

Dodos developed an unfair reputation as lacking intelligence – hence the saying, ‘dumb as a dodo.’ It is believed this was because they were very trusting of the first humans they came in contact with – and as a result they were easily hunted for food to the point they became extinct.

But recent research shows they had an average brain to body size and probably had a similar intelligence to pigeons.

– with The New York Post

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GLOSSARY

• Biotech: the combination of natural sciences and engineering sciences
• primordial germ cells: special cells in animals that go on to form either eggs or sperm
• sterile: an embryo that can’t carry chicken cells but can be a host for the new species being created
• genetically-modified: a species that has had its genetic makeup changed
• surrogates: when a species is used as a host for the reproduction and creation of another species
• genetic diversity: having a wide range of different genetic traits within a species, which improves the species’ chance at survival
• genetic descendant: an animal that has a DNA structure as similar as possible to the dodo given that its genes have been altered by humans and won’t necessarily be exactly the same
• transgenic: an organism that has genetic material into which the DNA from an unrelated animal has been added artificially
• gene editing: changing the DNA sequence of an organism
• indistinguishable: not able to be told apart
• somatic cell nuclear transfer: a cloning technique where the nucleus from a body cell is transplanted into another egg cell that has had its own nucleus removed
• stewardship: taking care of something
• extant: still in existence

EXTRA READING
Wolf pup clones: is this ‘de-extinction’?
How Tassie tigers will be reborn
Bold plan to bring woolly mammoths back to life

QUICK QUIZ
1. What caused dodos to go extinct?
2. How long do scientists think it might take before dodos are brought back from extinction?
3. Which two species of bird are scientists using to help bring dodos back to life?
4. Which species have been brought back in the world’s first successful de-extinction?
5. Which country do dodos come from?

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Nonfiction book
Create a nonfiction mini book suitable for 6-8 year old readers that explains the extinction of dodos and the process of their potential “de-extinction”. Illustrate each page with a simple picture or diagram that will help the reader better understand the text.

Time: allow 45 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English; Science

2. Extension
As you read this news story, did you have questions or wonder, “What about …?”

Write down three questions that the story raised for you.

Choose one of your questions to try to answer. If it is something that could be answered with research, do the research to answer your question. If it is a question that will be answered in the future as the mission to bring back dodos continues, make a prediction about what will happen.

Time: allow 20 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English; Science

VCOP ACTIVITY
Summarise the article
A summary can be a really good way to grab the main idea plus some key points in the article as a highlight. Think of the summary like a little advertisement or extract you could use to encourage people to read the article in detail. You want to give them an overview of the article that includes the main idea (being able to tell the audience what the article is about in one sentence), plus a few of the key points of the information.

Remember to re-read your summary to check that it is clear, concise and makes sense to the audience who haven’t read the article yet. You need to make language choices that allow you to explain the information in only a few sentences.