Biotech Firm Hatches Chicks in Artificial Eggshell System

A biotech company announced Tuesday it has hatched 26 chickens from a 3D-printed lattice structure designed to function like an eggshell. The birds, ranging from a few days to several months old, were produced by pouring fertilized eggs into the artificial system, placing them in an incubator, adding calcium, and monitoring embryo growth in real time, according to Colossal Biosciences.

Company officials said the lattice includes a membrane that permits the correct amount of oxygen exchange. Researchers outside the company noted that temporary organs normally formed inside a real egg to nourish the embryo and remove waste were not replicated in the system.

"That’s not an artificial egg because you’ve poured in all the other parts that make it an egg. It’s an artificial eggshell," said evolutionary biologist Vincent Lynch with the University at Buffalo.

Colossal’s chief executive Ben Lamm said the technology could eventually support efforts to produce birds resembling New Zealand’s extinct South Island giant moa. Scientists first would need to compare ancient moa DNA with living bird genomes and develop a larger eggshell before any such attempt.

"We didn’t want to wait till we were ready to birth a giant moa. We actually wanted to start working on the engineering challenges for surrogacy and birth now," Lamm said.

Hemmings, who studies bird reproductive biology at the University of Sheffield, said producing a chick from an artificial vessel is not new and that earlier transparent eggshell methods have been used for decades. Bioethicist Arthur Caplan with New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine said a key remaining question is what environment a revived species would inhabit.

Hemmings added that preservation of currently endangered species may be a higher priority than attempts to bring back extinct animals.