(ORDO NEWS) — Billion-dollar startup Colossal Biosciences says it is one step closer to resurrecting the dodo, a flightless bird that has been extinct since the 17th century.
According to a press release, this futuristic plan is only possible now that the Dallas-based company has deciphered the entire genome of the dodo.
This bird is the latest in a collection of long-extinct animals that scientists want to bring back to life. The startup has previously said it plans to recreate the Tasmanian wolf andwoolly mammoth.
There is still a lot to be done before these birds can be brought back. Scientists can’t recreate life from scratch, so they’ll have to find a way to put specific dodo genes into a living animal’s embryo.
This in itself is not an easy task. The next step is to compare that genetic information with genes from closely related birds, such as the Nicobar pigeon and the Rodrigues solitaire, the extinct giant flightless pigeon, to figure out the mutations that “make a dodo a dodo,” Beth Shapiro, the project’s lead geneticist, told CNN.
Shapiro says the ultimate plan will be to reintroduce the birds to Mauritius, where they lived before they were decimated by humans.
A bird created using this approach would be a hybrid resembling its ancestor.
The plan is “very, very complex,” Evan Birney, deputy director of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, who is not involved in the project, told The Guardian..
However, since 2021, the company has raised another $150 million for the project, totaling $225 million. According to Bloomberg , the latest investment values the startup at $1.5 billion.
There are obvious ethical issues when it comes to creating a species for the purpose of releasing it into the wild,” Birney said.
“There are people who think that because you can do what you have to do, but I’m not sure what purpose it serves and if it’s really a better allocation of resources,” Birney told The Guardian.
“We have to save the species we have before they go extinct.”
Colossal Biosciencesclaims that the return of these animals is not her only goal.
These grand plans also serve as a moonshine for conservation research , and it is hoped that useful tools may be discovered along the way to help animals survive the current biodiversity crisis, the report said.
“We are clearly in the midst of an extinction crisis. And it’s our responsibility to tell stories and get people excited in a way that motivates them to think about the extinction crisis that’s happening right now. “Now,” Shapiro told CNN.
“I am especially looking forward to the further development of bird-focused genetic rescue tools and bird conservation,” she said.
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