• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

“De-Extinction” Of The Dodo Receives $150 Million In Funding

February 1, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The de-extinction of long lost species is a firm favourite in science fiction, but in recent years companies in the real world have been setting their sights on bringing groups of animals from beyond the grave. Most recently, Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences have caused a buzz over their plans to bring back Earth’s lost bottom-heavy bird: the dodo.

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) spent a blissful few million years living isolated on the tropical island of Mauritius. Its pigeon ancestor travelled there and set up shop on the forest floor, adapting over time to become a flightless bird that lived it up free from predators among the giant tortoises and giant skinks.

Advertisement

The utopia came crashing down, however, when humans arrived with a few extra invasive species in tow. Not used to having predators to fear, the dodos were an easy catch, and eventually were hunted into extinction.

The idea of de-extinction has been toyed with throughout history, with species such as the woolly mammoth and thylacine both being floated for the treatment. In 2022, a team at the University of California, led by professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Beth Shapiro, brought the dodo to the de-extinction table after they mapped its genome for the first time. 

Previous attempts using a specimen from Oxford, UK, had been unsuccessful, but a “fantastic specimen” from Denmark gifted them some sufficiently well-preserved DNA. Unfortunately, even armed with a full genome it would be very difficult to bring back the dodo due to the obstacles that the intricacies of avian reproduction represent.

nicobar pigeon dodo

The Nicobar pigeon is the dodo’s closest living relative. Image credit: mountaintrek / Shutterstock.com

Scientists at Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences, however, have not been put off the task, and have even gone as far as outlining their roadmap to bringing the dodo back to life. For them, it begins with the dodo’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon, and creating primordial germ cells (PGCs).

Advertisement

These will then be transferred into a surrogate chicken host. Why? “The foundation of avian genomics and editing technologies starts with chickens,” reads the site, “the most populous bird in the world.”

Cracking the code to successful interspecies germline transfer by taking pigeon PGCs and putting them inside a chicken surrogate is something the company hopes could then be applied to the conservation of threatened species across the globe. Initially starting with pigeons, who knows where the technology could go from there.

Whatever your view on de-extinction, it seems that for now the project is full-steam ahead, as it’s received $150 million in funding. It’s their second round of funding and one that Gizmodo reports was joined by multiple venture capital firms, including In-Q-Tel (who are funded by the CIA) and the United States Innovative Technology Fund.

One of the most common arguments against de-extinction is that it’s arguably more realistic to focus on the conservation of species that still have a place on the planet, as the ecological services long-extinct species once provided might no longer have a place in the modern world. That said, if Jurassic Park-ing a dodo can provide new insights to help better protect endangered species, perhaps this sci-fi story could go beyond its entertainment value.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Japan firms see economy recovering to pre-COVID level in FY2022
  2. NBA-Unvaccinated players to face extensive COVID-19 curbs – memo
  3. Could Dragons On Westeros Fly? Aeronautical Engineering And Math Say They Could
  4. New Emperor Penguin Colony Spotted From Space Thanks To Their Poop

Source Link: “De-Extinction” Of The Dodo Receives $150 Million In Funding

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version