Dodo species resurrection project

• An ambitious new project — a collaboration between genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation — promises to just bring the dodo back to life, and also re-introduce it in its once-native habitat in Mauritius.

ABOUT DODO (RAPHUS CUCULLATUS)

• These were flightless birds that were endemic to the island of Mauritius.
• The last of its species died, sometime in the final two decades of the 17th century.
  • The tubby flightless bird has become somewhat of an ‘icon of extinction’.
• Dodos were remarkably well-adapted for the ecosystem they inhabited, with its abundant supply of food, and lack of major predators.
• Extinction
  • Their extinction became inevitable with arrival of humans on the scene.
  • Dutch colonists first landed in Mauritius in 1598.
    • Dodos disappeared around 80 years later.
  • Not only did the Dutch hunt the meaty bird, but the animals they brought with them — dogs, cats, rats— wreaked havoc on the defenceless dodos and their eggs.

ABOUT THEIR REINTRODUCTION

• To de-extinct a species, the first thing required is accurate and complete genetic information.
  • This is known as a species’ genome — each genome contains all of the information needed to build that organism and allow it to grow and develop.
• The company has successfully sequenced the entire genome of the dodo using DNA extracted from a skull in the collection of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
• This is now being compared to the genome of the Rodrigues solitaire, the dodo’s closest (also extinct) relative to identify just what makes a dodo, a dodo.
• It has also sequenced the genome of the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest extant relative, and found its primordial germ cells (PGCs).
  • PGCs are basically embryonic precursors of a species’ sperm and egg.
• The Nicobar pigeon’s PGCs will now be edited to express the physical traits of a dodo, with the help of the insight gathered from the comparison of the genomes of all three birds.
• These edited PGCs will then be inserted into the embryos of a sterile chicken and rooster, who will act as ‘interspecies surrogates’. In theory, when the chicken and rooster reproduce, they will give birth to a dodo offspring.