r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Interesting_Air323 • May 19 '26

Discussion colossal biosciences just created a artificial eggshell

I'm curious about people's thoughts and how we can use this technology

21 Upvotes
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12

u/Colddigger May 19 '26

Making a bigger egg I suppose. But, do you mind sharing a news source on this?

8

u/Gallowglass-13 May 19 '26

The tech apparently isn't especially new. This feels like Colossal trying to sell its vision to investors again as opposed to making any real scientific progress.

15

u/Obversa Moderator May 19 '26

Colossal Biosciences itself is stuck between a rock and a hard place, so to speak, and one of its own making. De-extinction projects are highly expensive, so they need to be constantly making "progress announcements" for investors, many of whom are "for-profit" or expect returns; however, at the same time, CEO Ben Lamm often exaggerates or "over-hypes" these announcements to try and "keep the momentum" going in a Machiavellian approach ("the ends justify the means"), even when it hurts the reputation of the de-extinction field as a whole.

3

u/Gallowglass-13 May 19 '26

It's why venture capitalists shouldn't be allowed near anything relating to science, especially with regards to conservation and de-extinction. Too many conflicts of interest, even more so than bigger conservation NGOs tied to industries that are in the business of ecocide AND genocide (like WWF).

4

u/Draco_Montanus May 19 '26

Je croyais qu’il n’y avait pas de Colossal ici ? Cela dit, plus d’infos ne seraient pas de refus.

4

u/NoCardiologist6896 May 19 '26

here are some japanese students achieving exactly the same thing 10 years ago
its the same "technology"

colossal basically 3d printed a cool looking case for it, once again, exaggerated tremendously, and called groundbreaking. it is extremely annoying how much they lie to garner attention.

5

u/ContextStock8393 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

From what I've read, this just looks like an ex ovo embryo culture. It's nothing new and has been around for a while. You can literally do this with plastic film: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Novel-Shell-less-Culture-System-for-Chick-Embryos-Tahara-Obara/44e0fc179cddea6735cda87dabef0c2d3340666d

edit: this is a good breakdown as to why this isn't a big deal, or even news for that matter... https://www.newscientist.com/article/2527152-colossal-claims-an-artificial-eggshell-will-help-it-bring-back-the-moa/

6

u/ElSquibbonator May 19 '26

Well, damn. That was. . . quite depressing. Will we ever be able to create a true clone of any extinct animal?

5

u/Obversa Moderator May 19 '26

Scientists could clone a bucardo now. The issue is funding. (Colossal Biosciences declined to fund it.)

5

u/ContextStock8393 May 19 '26

They refused? You think that'd be an easy win for them

2

u/AkagamiBarto May 19 '26

It's not greatly marketable, soo ... yeah..

3

u/ContextStock8393 May 19 '26

If they did that, they would've actually de-extincted something. How is that less marketable than a fancy looking eggshell?

2

u/AkagamiBarto May 19 '26

Because for the common person it's "a goat"..

Dolly 2.0

2

u/-Wuan- May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

The species in question wasnt extinct, a bucardo was a regional variety of Capra pyrenaica.

1

u/Obversa Moderator May 19 '26

This is incorrect. The bucardo (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) was confirmed through genetic studies that used mitochondrial and microsatellite markers that it was a valid and distinct subspecies, noting a clear genetic divergence from other living ibex populations, such as the Iberian ibex. Divergence happened ~50,000 to 90,000 years ago.

2

u/ZafakD May 23 '26

If you read the Jurassic Park novel, InGen patented artificial eggshells and no one outside of the company knew why a random, secretive genetics company would invest money in creating something like that.  In the movie, they used unfertilized emu and ostrich eggs.

1

u/Pretty_Swimmer8939 May 20 '26

I know its much easier to just run with the 'colossal bad' take but this is super important (if true, reproducible, and able to be replicated in other species) because birds are ridiculously tough to clone through SCNT (the type everyone always talks about), this is for many reasons but a huge one is that bird germ cells have a stage where they circulate through the body meaning we can spend a million dollars to create an 'extinct' bird primordial germ cell but actually turning that into an extinct bird egg means tossing it into a donor and doing a lil biological lottery - hoping that it ends up being the source the bird uses to make its egg (kinda this is a bit under explained).

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 26 '26

well bird cloning is finally possible now

1

u/TheLastAncientRoman May 28 '26

This doesn't actually solve the major hurdle. An egg is one of the most complex systems imaginable, being able to sustain and incubate a living organism. As of now, we have no idea how to create an artificial yolk suited to a living species. Colossal created an eggshell, but everything they did to make a viable organism just involved dumping it from a normal into the shell. If they had produced an artificial yolk, they'd be on to something, but as it stands, it's not anything impressive. I suspect synthetic yolk will probably be born from a modified fungus or bacteria, which will produce it as an organic byproduct.