Plans to use genetic technologies to recreate the dodo, a large flightless bird that vanished more than 400 years ago, have gained significant momentum, according to the Texas-based biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences.
Researchers at the company said they had succeeded in culturing specialized cells from the rock pigeon (Columba livia), better known as the common pigeon. They plan to apply the same or similar methods to culture cells from the closest living relative of the dodo – the Nicobar pigeon, which belongs to the same bird family.
Colossal described the achievement as a “turning point” in the long-running effort to revive the dodo, cautioning that reviving a living dodo is still ahead.
“This is truly an important step for the dodo project, but also for bird conservation in general,”
– Beth Shapiro
“This step essentially removes a barrier to the dodo project. We needed it to move forward, and now that it exists, we are truly moving ahead.”
– Beth Shapiro
The Ambitions and Realities of De-Extinction Technologies
The company also drew attention with its previous achievement: in April they reported the birth of three wolf-like canids – the revival of a carnivorous ancestor through ancient DNA, cloning, and gene editing. Similar efforts to bring back the mammoth and other extinct species are also underway.
On Wednesday Colossal announced an additional funding of $120 million, bringing the total funding since its founding in 2021 to $555 million.
However, the methods needed to put the bird back on wings differ from those used for wolves: birds develop in eggs and cannot be cloned in the same way as mammals, which makes the process much more complex.
“In birds, the slowest part is two generations. We cannot clone cells, so we have to create mothers and fathers separately, and then cross them to obtain both copies of the gene for modification,” said Shapiro. “It’s quite slow.”
To this end, scientists at Colossal have focused on cultivating primordial germ cell (PGC) progenitors from the rock pigeon – a vital component for the formation of eggs and sperm – in and around New York City.
The company noted that the chosen model – the rock pigeon – was selected because of its widespread breeding and its distant relation to the dodo. Researchers previously successfully cultured PGCs from chickens and ducks, which laid the groundwork for various avian-reproduction experiments.
“The first cell-culture recipe for chicken PGCs was published nearly 20 years ago,”
– Anna Keite
“Unfortunately, that recipe did not work for any other bird species, not even closely related ones like pheasants. Discovering a recipe for pigeons greatly expands avian reproductive technologies and underpins our work on the dodo,” Keite added.
The team tested more than 300 recipes before finding the right combination of growth factors, molecules, and metabolites that allowed gametogenic cells to grow for 60 days. Details of the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, were released on Wednesday.
Shapiro noted that the next steps include using the cells to create living pigeons born to a surrogate hen as a proof of concept.
Meanwhile, Colossal is working on cultivating primordial gametogenic cells of the Nicobar pigeon – a species more closely related to the dodo. The company established a breeding colony of these birds in Texas and began collecting the relevant cells.
In addition, the scientists plan to edit the Nicobar pigeon’s gametogenic cells to include dodo traits, using genomic data from museum specimens. After that, the edited PGCs will be integrated into the embryos of ordinary chickens, which already carry modifications, so that they would not produce their own gametes. Chickens are chosen as surrogates due to their size and suitability for laboratory conditions.
The main goal is to enable the development of edited Nicobar pigeon PGCs into functional eggs and sperm, so that the descendants’ eggs and sperm carry dodo traits.
“Together, these achievements – culturing pigeon and chicken PGCs with edited genomes that do not produce their own PGCs – lay the groundwork for using surrogate chickens to bring back the dodo’s relatives, and eventually the dodo itself,”
– Colossal
According to Ben Lamm, the CEO of Colossal, it will take at least five to seven years to realize this plan.
Critics note that, despite advances in genetic engineering, fully reviving an extinct species is impossible – any attempt would likely produce only a hybrid.
The company insists that the goal is not to copy the vanished genetic code in full, but to create functional copies with the key traits.
“Dodos belonged to the pigeon family. So given the degree of shared genes between the dodo and the Nicobar pigeon, theoretically you would only need to insert the dodo’s unique genes into a gametogenic cell or edit the pigeon’s genes to make it resemble the dodo. This could yield a bird similar to the dodo,”
– Scott McDougall-Shackleton
“While Colossal’s achievements push the field of genetic engineering forward, reviving an extinct species is not possible – any attempt would create only a modified hybrid,”
– biodiversity conservation experts
“Could we now find a stable variant, perhaps in a historic sample or in a very close relative, known to be resistant to a particular pathogen, and could we reintroduce this into the general population?”
– Koos van Oosterhout
“Jurassic Park–style technologies attract investors with deep pockets who typically have little interest in biodiversity,” Oosterhout concluded.
However, gene editing is just one element of a larger puzzle. Experts emphasize that the main responsibility of society is to prevent extinction and habitat loss. Technologies cannot by themselves solve the biodiversity crisis: they may help individual species, but they are not the “fuel” for reviving species.
In the future, such technologies may serve as tools to support conservation, but the core work of conserving biodiversity will remain with humanity.