A pigeon that could not fly – in those words he sounds a bit banal. For centuries the extinct Dodo (Raphus Cucullatus) then also an easy prey for artists. In comic books, in paintings, in cartoons, as a bronze statue: everywhere the bird popped up with a foolish look and oversized beak. The Dodo became a caricature of itself, In 2021, Dutch researchers concluded in Historical Biology – It’s not for nothing that it was ever the prevailing opinion that that walghvogel Partly due to his own sulkiness, extinct.
That thought is outdated; The Dodo is Bon Ton. So much in fact that the American Colossal cinemas announced in 2023 want to bring the species back to life. Last month the biotechnology company (which also wants to return the extinct Mammoet and Giant Wolf), he said he says he is the first crucial step in that process. The researchers had succeeded in growing primordial germ cells from rock pigeons. What does that mean? Do we really get the Dodo back? And do we have to want that?
De-Extincence-the ‘disproportionate’ of species-appeals to the imagination, with the famous fiction prevention Jurassic Park. In it, dinosaurs are brought to life thanks to DNA with blood -sucked mosquitoes, immortalized in amber. More realistic are recent scientific attempts with ignite animals: in Italy, the fertility expert Cesare Galli tries to save the northern white rhino of ruin. The last man died of that subspecies years ago, but his sperm was frozen in time in a straw and with it Galli successfully inseminated egg cells of two still living females. They are now in a lab.
The rhino project entails the necessary discussions and that also applies to real de-texting. Opponents think that money is better to protect living species. The American biologist Rodrigo Bélllo Carvalho recently warned Biological Conservation That the method is now seen too much as a panacee, as a panacea that biodiversity loss could prevent, while extinction is still an irreversible process.
Moreover, the question is whether there is still room for extinct species in our current pressure -populated world, ”says Ethicus Franck Meijboom, professor Sustainable Animal Stewardship At the University of Utrecht, in a telephone conversation “What is so striking about all those de-textiction projects is that it is always about iconic animals. The big, huggable species with a pathetic story. That sells well. But why would merely earn the most to earn to be brought back to life? is more essential for the ecosystem. “
Chicken embryos
Proponents emphasize that endangered species also benefit from the plans. “Our breakthrough with the germ cells is good news for all birds,” says evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer At Colossal, in a video call. “Because with the new techniques, we can also prevent endangered species from disappearing in the future.” To emphasize immediately afterwards: “This was a first important step in the process, but many more will have to follow. Returning a bird is much more complicated than bringing a mammal back.”
That is, she says, because birds cannot be cloned: in the eggs they lay, the embryo is already developing. “In mammals we can convey the core of a body cell to a ripe, still unfertilized egg from which the core is removed. That Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer has been applied to Dolly the sheep. But that is not possible with birds. ”
Hence those primordial germ cells, the precursors of the later sexual cells: from this, dodo chickens must be born, via genetically modified father and mother birds. “We need two generations, that makes it a slow process.”
What has now succeeded with the rock pigeonsis applied to in the next step Nicobar Pigeons Either Manendruiven, the narrow most living related to the Dodo. The germ cells will then be genetically manipulated to add ‘dodo genes’, and are injected into chickens embryos, because they are easier to keep than pigeons. (The chickens are also genetically modified to not produce their own germ cells). The chicks that are then born would then contain germ cells with dodo -like genetic material.
How long it takes? “Ultimately, we want a healthy animal and so we look at how we are as little genetic as possible edits have to make. As a result, we keep the risk of incorrect interaction with the Nicobar guest genome as low as possible. Caution is more important than speed: we’ve been waiting for the Dodo for centuries, we can wait a few more years. “
A large dodotoage
It was Shapiro who in 2002, as a PhD student in Oxford, demonstrated that the Dodo was a distant related to contemporary pigeons. Later, with colleagues, she unraveled the ‘full’ genome of the species based on museum material-although missing parts were supplemented with information from Duiven-DNA.
Everyone in the world of Ancient DNA Knows her name, on her arm she has a big dodotoage. “The Dodo was the first bird I ever studied, and now it is when everything goes according to plan the first extinct bird we will bring back to the wild.” Because that is the goal: that in the foreseeable future a genetically diverse population of thousands of dodos will walk around on Mauritius, the island where the birds lived until they die out at the end of the seventeenth century.
“Of course we carry out this project in close consultation with residents of Mauritius. We regularly come together with the DODO advisory committee and have done ecological research to see where reintroduction could take place; we have a few locations in mind. On the island we get a lot of support, people hope that Dodo-Tourism gives the economy a boost.”
The Dutch scientist Leon Claessens, as a professor of Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution at Maastricht University, is not directly involved in the project, is more reluctant. As a Dodokenner he has been doing fieldwork on Mauritius for decades and he emphasizes that the island has changed radically since the seventeenth century. “Little is left of the original landscape, certainly since in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on a large scale of sugar plantations have been laid. Everything that could be built on has now been built on, the Dodo has been lost anyway its original habitat. And the now made Dodo will not be originally originally – there may still be a donor in appearance, but then there will be a predictor, but then there will be a predictor and then Genet. To which so much crafts can be released without problems in the wild. ”
Proponents often say that people can make up for his own mistakes in this way
The De-Extiniction Scientists find it. Or as professor Andrew Pask of the Australian Tigrr-Lab, where we work under the wings of Colossal on the return of the Tasmanian tiger, It expresses in an interview in Nature: “My motivation is not the creation of a zoo animal. We want to replace the Tasmanian tiger […] Where he can solve the imbalance in the ecosystem. ” As far as the Dodo is concerned, Shapiro suspects that the presence of a “giant bird eating on the ground” can have positive consequences for the Mauritian ecosystem.
It is often mentioned as an argument for de-extemse that humans can make up for his own mistakes. Pask says to Nature: “People ask why we want to play with our work for God, but we did that just when we wasted the Tasmanian tiger. My research is aimed at healing the lost biodiversity.” That sounds Nobel, but the risk is that people will get stuck in a “Technofix,” Meijboom warns. “If you know that species can be returned, you might get more lax with protection. While we can only stop the biodiversity loss if we also tackle the causes. Countering deforestation, fragmentation of nature reserves – we have to work on that.”
Claessens: “About the Dodo, the story was long circulating that the Dutch had killed the last birds. That is a lot more nuanced, from their settlement they did not enter the impenetrable interior, so there was initially enough hiding place for the birds. But the real necks were indirectly involved.
Shapiro is of the opinion that the “new toolbox” that they develop with their techniques also want to help the living species. “We also invest with this in nature conservation. Nobody says that we can win the war against extinction with only biotech. But I often see that people are reluctant to embrace new techniques. Species richness is now declining so hard that we have to remain resourceful.” In that view, for example, the genes of endangered species could be changed in such a way that they are more resistant to diseases.
Colossal has achieved one thing anyway, Claessens emphasizes: “There is plenty of talk about it. This also brings the conversation on nature conservation and biodiversity crisis. It increases awareness.”
Tasmanian tiger and mammoth
Afraid that the money that is now being invested in Biotech – COLOSSAL raised 200 million dollars for the Mammoet, the Tasmanian tiger and the Dodo – He is not at the expense of traditional nature conservation projects. “They are private investments, Leonardo DiCaprio and Paris Hilton gave money to this project. That would not have automatically went to the World Wildlife Fund.”
“This is certainly not the solution for our biodiversity problem,” says Meijboom. “And Mauritius is fine without a Dodo. But from a cultural-historical perspective I understand. Compare it with Notre Dame in Paris. Now that torentje is on it again, it seems risen from the ashes. But of course we just look at a twenty-first-century torentje. It is not the original construction.”
The question remains whether we will soon be able to consider a genetically brought together Dodo as a real Dodo. Earlier this year, Colossal said it had spent two giant wolf puppies. With twenty interventions in the genetic code of the Gray Wolf, they would have brought the extinct primal with large heads and wide jaws back to life. But according to critics it was mainly a genetic ‘facelift’.
Shapiro – which is the next tattoo considering the nose of a giant wolf – finds it an irrelevant issue. “Ecosystems are not interested in naming, either not.” Claessens would opt for a name such as Colossal-Dodo or Dododuif. And if that Dodo 2.0 walks around on Mauritius, he will definitely go and see. “I want to see all the laws of gravity with its colossal body with its colossal body with its own eyes.”
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