Artificial egg helps Colossal hatch its de-extinction plans

Colossal Biosciences, the company that produced a trio of modern-day dire wolves, now has its own answer to the question: What comes first, the chicken or the egg?

The Dallas-headquartered biotech firm has developed an artificial egg that has been used to hatch healthy chickens, the company announced Tuesday, May 19. In development for about two years, the "first-of-its-kind incubation platform" has been used to raise more than 30 chickens, which live at Colossal's avian facility in Texas.

The achievement is an important milestone in the company's goal of bringing back New Zealand's South Island Giant Moa, which went extinct about 600 years ago. The moa's egg is about 80 times the size of a chicken egg, so it's not feasible to use a surrogate host for birthing new moa chicks, Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm told USA TODAY.

Thus, the need for an artificial egg. Lamm compared it to the company's creation of the Colossal Woolly Mouse, which was genetically engineered to have characteristics that could eventually be used in creating a next-generation woolly mammoth.

"It's really, really important, because we've told the world that eventually we want exogenous development," the ability to create offspring "completely outside of the womb … not just for extinct species, but so that we could productionize endangered species," said Lamb, who was recently named to the board of directors for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

What does the artificial egg look like?

The oval artificial egg looks a bit like a tea infuser, with an open lid to observe embryonic development.

The 3D-printed rigid shell, made up of a grid of hexagon shapes, has a silicone-based membrane replicating the interior of a real egg. "Our permeable membrane allows oxygen to diffuse into the system through the membrane at ambient temperatures," said Colossal chief science officer Beth Shapiro in a new explanatory video posted on YouTube.

The artificial egg fits within a standardized incubator. Colossal scientists tested the artificial egg on embryos harvested from freshly laid chicken eggs.

They are monitored over about 21 days and occasionally given some needed nutrients. Once hatched, the chicks are cared for and, when they are big enough, allowed to join the other chickens on the company's avian facility. Eventually, Colossal's artificial eggs will be used to grow genetically engineered embryos into hatchlings.

At the end of a new YouTube video posted by Colossal, you can watch a time-lapse segment showing the development of an embryo to a chick, viewed through the opening at the top of the artificial egg.

“We’ve created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate,” said Colossal chief biology officer Andrew Pask in a news release. "The genome is the blueprint, but without a place to build, it’s meaningless. The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate. It’s species-agnostic, size-scalable, and unlocks entirely new pathways – from rescuing endangered birds with low hatch success to enabling de-extinction where no surrogate exists."

The artificial egg will make it easier for researchers to study not only avian developmental biology – because Colossal researchers cracked the egg, so to speak – but also potentially outside the womb development of other creatures. "If we, as scientists, now have the ability to complete embryo development under normal atmospheric conditions in artificial eggs, this represents a significant engineering and biological advance with strong implications for endangered species rescue, developmental biology, and genome engineering," said Prof. Tomas Marques Bonet, an evolutionary and conservation biologist from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, who is an advisor to Colossal, told USA TODAY in an email exchange.

What are Colossal's plans for the artificial eggs, chicks

The chickens hatched from the artificial eggs are living out their lives on Colossal's avian facility. "We're responsible for everything about their lives. We want them to both be healthy physically, but also mentally," said Colossal's head of animal husbandry Steve Metzler in the new video.

Colossal gets most of its attention for its "de-extinction" plans of bringing back extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Australian thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). However, research advances in those projects can help the preservation of other animals such as elephants, the white rhino, the red wolf, bison and others, the company says.

Still, Colossal has its detractors. The animals the company is creating as part of its de-extinction program won't have the same social structure their ancestors did, they say.

"It could be very cruel to those animals," Jeanne Loring, a biologist from the Scripps Institute in California, told NPR. Beyond that, tinkering with science could have unknown repercussions, she said. "It could be catastrophic," Loring says. "There's too many variables that we don't understand. There are too many things that could happen."

In the future, Colossal could have countless eggs, or eventually artificial wombs, growing hatchlings meant to re-establish an extinct species or strengthen an endangered one.

"The ability to incubate avian embryos outside a biological shell – at any size and in standard commercial incubators – is a capability conservation programs simply don’t have today. We’re building it for the moa, but it’s designed to support critically endangered species broadly," said Colossal's chief animal officer Matt James in a statement.

“The artificial egg allows us to rescue compromised embryos, build genetic rescue platforms, and utilize donor and biobanked material in ways that weren’t previously possible. It reflects deep collaboration across biology, engineering, and software – and opens entirely new pathways to help address the biodiversity crisis," said James, who also heads The Colossal Foundation, the company's charitable arm. 

Does Colossal’s artificial egg finally answer the question of which came first? Well, it depends on your point of view. A chicken did lay the eggs, which were transferred to artificial eggs to grow. But in the future, could a genetically-engineered embryo shift the answer toward the egg?

Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at  mikegsnider  &  @mikegsnider.bsky.social  &  @mikesnider & [email protected].