Colossal Biosciences Hatches Live Chicks from Fully Artificial Eggs, Advancing the Path to Moa De-Extinction
A new generation of shell-less incubation technology supports complete avian embryo development without supplemental oxygen, at any scale
Colossal Biosciences, the world's first de-extinction company, today announced that it has successfully hatched multiple healthy chicks from fully artificial eggs. Colossal's incubation platform supports complete avian embryo development outside a biological eggshell, from early embryo to hatch, without the need for supplemental oxygen. The breakthrough is a critical step on the path to de-extincting the South Island Giant Moa and opens new possibilities for avian conservation and biotechnology.
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Prior shell-less culture systems, first attempted in the 1980s, required large volumes of pure oxygen that cause DNA damage, limit scalability, and are incompatible with standard commercial incubators. Colossal's team overcame this barrier by engineering a lattice shell architecture incorporating a novel bioengineered silicone-based membrane that matches the oxygen transfer capacity of a natural eggshell under normal atmospheric conditions. The result is a device compatible with standard commercial incubators, manufacturable at scale, and explicitly size-scalable to accommodate eggs far beyond those of any living bird.
