The dodo is one of the most famous extinct creatures on the planet — but is there a chance it could be brought back to life?
Well, with advances in science and thanks to the first successful sequencing of the flightless bird’s entire genome last year, experts think that’s a possibility.
US startup Colossal Biosciences, based in Dallas, Texas, has just revealed plans to ‘de-extinct’ the dodo more than 350 years after it was wiped out from the island of Mauritius in the 17th century.
The company will inject $150 million (£121 million) into the new project, which will go hand-in-hand with previously announced ventures to bring back the extinct woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger.
Reborn? Scientists have launched a project to bring back the dodo using stem cell technology
How will it be done? This graphic explains what scientists will need to do to achieve the feat
To achieve the feat, scientists first had to sequence the dodo’s entire genome from bone specimens and other fragments, which has now been done.
Next, they will have to gene-edit the skin cell of a close living relative, which in the dodo’s case is the Nicobar pigeon, so that its genome matches that of the extinct bird.
This genetically-altered cell then has to be used to create an embryo – in the same way as Dolly the Sheep in 1996 – and brought to term in a living surrogate mother.
Scientists hope that the chick that hatches will resemble something between the Nicobar pigeon and the dodo.
They’re aiming for it to be born within the next six years.
However, the expert leading the dodo de-extinction project – paleogeneticist Beth Shapiro – cautioned that it would not be easy to recreate a ‘living, breathing, actual animal’ in the form of the 3ft (one metre) tall bird.
It was her team that sequenced the bird’s entire genome for the first time in March 2022, having spent years struggling to find well enough preserved DNA.
‘Mammals are simpler,’ said Professor Shapiro, of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
‘If I have a cell and it’s living in a dish in the lab and I edit it so that it has a bit of Dodo DNA, how do I then transform that cell into a whole living, breathing, actual animal?
‘The way we can do this is to clone it, the same approach that was used to create Dolly the Sheep, but we don’t know how to do that with birds because of the intricacies of their reproductive pathways.’
She added: ‘So there needs to be another approach for birds and this is one really fundamental technological hurdle in de-extinction.
‘There are groups working on different approaches for doing that and I have little doubt that we are going to get there but it is an additional hurdle for birds that we don’t have for mammals.’
The dodo gets its name from the Portuguese word for ‘fool’, after colonialists mocked its apparent lack of fear of human hunters.
It also became prey for cats, dogs and pigs that had been brought with sailors exploring the Indian Ocean.
Because the species lived in isolation on Mauritius for hundreds of years, the bird was fearless, and its inability to fly made it easy prey.
Its last confirmed sighting was in 1662 after Dutch sailors first spotted the species just 64 years earlier in 1598.
US startup Colossal Biosciences, based in Dallas, Texas, has just announced plans to ‘de-extinction’ the flightless bird more than 350 years after it was wiped out in the 17th century
However, the expert leading the dodo de-extinction project – paleogeneticist Beth Shapiro (pictured left) – cautioned that it would not be easy to recreate a ‘living, breathing, actual animal’ in the form of the flightless bird. Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal is right
Since launching in September 2021, Colossal Biosciences has raised a total of $225 million (£181 million) in funding to support its initiatives.
Professor Shapiro, who is also the company’s lead paleogeneticist, said: ‘The dodo is a prime example of a species that became extinct because we – people – made it impossible for them to survive in their native habitat.
‘Having focused on genetic advancements in ancient DNA for my entire career and as the first to fully sequence the dodo’s genome, I am thrilled to collaborate with Colossal and the people of Mauritius on the de-extinction and eventual re-wilding of the dodo.
‘I particularly look forward to furthering genetic rescue tools focused on birds and avian conservation.’
It was Professor Shapiro’s team that sequenced the bird’s entire genome for the first time in March 2022, having spent years struggling to find well enough preserved DNA
History: The dodo gets its name from the Portuguese word for ‘fool’, after colonialists mocked its apparent lack of fear of human hunters
HOW WAS DOLLY THE SHEEP CREATED?
Dolly was the only surviving lamb from 277 cloning attempts and was created from a mammary cell taken from a six-year-old Finn Dorset sheep.
She was created in 1996 at a laboratory in Edinburgh using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).
The pioneering technique involved transferring the nucleus of an adult cell into an unfertilised egg cell whose own nucleus had been removed.
An electric shock stimulated the hybrid cell to begin dividing and generate an embryo, which was then implanted into the womb of a surrogate mother.
Dolly was the first successfully produced clone from a cell taken from an adult mammal.
Dolly’s creation showed that genes in the nucleus of a mature cell are still able to revert back to an embryonic totipotent state – meaning the cell can divide to produce all of the difference cells in an animal.
Colossal today revealed it had received $150 million (£121 million) in funding which the company said was enabling it to launch its Avian Genomics Group.
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‘This will pursue the de-extinction of the iconic Dodo, a bird species that was wiped out of its native ecosystem, Mauritius, as a direct result of human settlement and ecosystem competition in 1662,’ the firm added.
‘The World Wildlife Fund found that in the last 50 years, Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69 per cent at the hands of mankind,’ said Ben Lamm, co-founder and CEO of Colossal.
‘By gathering the smartest minds across investing, genomics, conservation and synthetic biology, we have the opportunity to reverse human-inflicted biodiversity loss while developing technologies for both conservation and human healthcare.
‘We are honoured to be backed by a dedicated and diverse group of investors and are excited to work to bring additional species back to the planet.’
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the world’s bird population has declined by more than three billion in the last 50 years.
The IUCN Red List also now categorises more than 400 bird species as either extinct, extinct in the wild, or critically endangered.
Colossal said it was on a mission to ‘reverse these staggering statistics through genetic rescue techniques and its de-extinction toolkit’.
The company’s latest announcement comes less than a year and a half after it announced plans to de-extinct two other famous species: the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger.
The latter, also known as the tyhlacine, roamed the Earth for millions of years before being wiped out by human hunting in the 1930s.
Once ranging throughout Australia and New Guinea, the Tasmanian tiger disappeared from the mainland around 3,000 years ago.
It has long been thought that this was due to competition with humans and dogs.
The remaining population – isolated on the island of Tasmania – was hunted to extinction in the early 20th century and the last known individual died at Hobart Zoo in 1936.
Woolly mammoths, meanwhile, could be brought back from extinction within six years in the form of elephant–mammoth hybrids, the company has suggested.
To bring the dodo back to life, scientists would have to edit the DNA of a living relative. In the dodo’s case, its closest relative is the Nicobar pigeon (pictured)
There has been a lot of excitement that woolly mammoths could also be created in the lab
Colossal Biosciences, a startup based in Dallas, Texas, has announced plans to start the ‘de-extinction’ of the species, using stem cell technology
Having once lived across much of Europe, North America and northern Asia, the iconic Ice Age species went into a terminal decline some 10,000 years ago.
The demise of the creatures — which could grow to some 11–12 feet tall and weigh up to 6 tonnes — has been linked to warming climates and hunting by our ancestors.
Colossal plans on using mammoth DNA that has been frozen in ice for thousands of years and combining it with modern-day genetic material from Asian elephants in order to create a hybrid animal that most closely resembles the extinct creature.
Its team of scientists claim that introducing the hybrids into the Arctic steppe might help to restore the degraded habitat and fight some of the impacts of climate change.
In particular, they argued, the elephant–mammoth mixes would knock down trees, thereby helping to restore Arctic grasslands — which keeps the ground cool.
WHAT IS CLONING AND COULD WE ONE DAY CLONE HUMANS?
What is cloning?
Cloning describes several different processes that can be used to produce genetically identical copies of a plant or animal.
In its most basic form, cloning works by taking an organism’s DNA and copying it to another place.
There are three different types of artificial cloning: Gene cloning, reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.
Gene cloning creates copies of genes or parts of DNA. Reproductive cloning creates copies of whole animals.
Therapeutic cloning produces embryonic stem cells for tests aimed at creating tissues to replace injured or diseased tissues.
To create somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) clones, scientists take DNA (red circle) from tissue and insert it into egg cells (yellow) with their DNA (green) removed. The scientists then switch on or off certain genes to help the cells replicate (right)
Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996 using a reproductive cloning process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT).
This takes a somatic cell, such as a skin cell, and moves its DNA to an egg cell with its nucleus removed.
Another more recent method of cloning uses Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC).
iPSCs are skin or blood cells that have been reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like state.
This allows scientists to design them into any type of cell needed.
Could we ever clone a human?
Currently there is no scientific evidence that human embryos can be cloned.
In 1998, South Korean scientists claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but said the experiment was interrupted when the clone was just a group of four cells.
In 2002, Clonaid, part of a religious group that believes humans were created by extraterrestrials, held a news conference to announce the birth of what it claimed to be the first cloned human, a girl named Eve.
This was widely dismissed as a publicity stunt.
In 2004, a group led by Woo-Suk Hwang of Seoul National University in South Korea published a paper in the journal Science in which it claimed to have created a cloned human embryo in a test tube.
Gene cloning creates copies of genes or parts of DNA. Reproductive cloning creates copies of whole animals (stock image)
In 2006 that paper was retracted.
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, from a technical perspective cloning humans is extremley difficult.
‘One reason is that two proteins essential to cell division, known as spindle proteins, are located very close to the chromosomes in primate eggs,’ it writes.
‘Consequently, removal of the egg’s nucleus to make room for the donor nucleus also removes the spindle proteins, interfering with cell division.’
The group explains that in other mammals, such as cats, rabbits and mice, the two spindle proteins are spread throughout the egg.
