Colossal Bio grows chicks in 3D-printed artificial eggs. Breakthrough or copycat technology?

The baby chicks were shifting and starting to pip—or trying to hatch. But not from an egg. 

Instead, these chickens were growing inside transparent 3D-printed plastic cups at the Dallas headquarters of Colossal Biosciences.

The biotech company … claimed it has developed a “fully artificial egg” as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian species, including birds like the dodo and the giant moa.

But “artificial eggshell” would probably be a better description for the invention. It’s an oval-shaped printed lattice, coated inside with a special silicone-based membrane that lets in oxygen, just as a real eggshell does.

Related on the SLP

Egg freezing: Smart career move? Microplastics as a blueprint for health scares: How the “panic pipeline” of activists and academics partners with tort lawyers to manufacture chemical crises 

The heated debate over trans athletes in the WNBA

Viewpoint: Women, depression and empathy: Explaining the gender gap in views about child-murderer Lindsay Clancy

Outing students: California court says schools need not notify parents of their child’s gender identity—unless they ask

… Colossal’s fluffed-up assertion of having created the “first-ever shell-less incubation system” is what’s raising hackles among the small flock of scientists who’ve been working on the technology for years.

“Clearly an overstatement,” says Katsuya Obara, at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, who in 2024 hatched chickens from beneath transparent plastic film. “The technology here is essentially a modification of existing methods.”

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here