Shell-less avian culture was first attempted in the 1980s, but prior systems required large volumes of pure oxygen, which cause DNA damage and impact long-term animal health and is an approach that is incompatible with standard commercial incubators while being impossible to scale for conservation or industrial applications. Colossal's team solved this by designing and engineering a lattice shell architecture that incorporates a novel bioengineered silicone-based membrane that matches the oxygen transfer capacity of a natural eggshell under normal atmospheric conditions created by Colossal's material science team. The result is a device compatible with standard commercial incubators, manufacturable at scale, and adaptable to eggs of any size.
"Every new scalable system for de-extinction is ultimately a biology problem wrapped in an engineering problem. The artificial egg is a perfect example," said Ben Lamm, CEO and Co-Founder at Colossal Biosciences. "Restoring species like the South Island Giant Moa isn't just about reconstructing ancient genomes and editing PGCs — it requires building an entirely new incubation system where no surrogate exists and scales in ways that ordinary biology simply doesn't. At Colossal, we didn't just replicate the egg; we re-engineered it from first principles to create something more scalable and controllable. This is what multidisciplinary science makes possible — bringing together biology, materials science, and engineering to solve one of nature's most elegant systems. It's a major milestone for Colossal and a foundational technology for our de-extinction toolkit."
THE ENGINEERING BREAKTHROUGH
The Colossal artificial egg achieves ambient oxygen sufficiency through a novel bioengineered silicone-based membrane lattice that matches and exceeds the oxygen transfer capacity of a natural chicken eggshell at 21% atmospheric O₂, eliminating the need for hyperoxic supplementation that limited prior attempts from scaling and negatively impacted the long-term health of the developing chick. The platform has demonstrated end-to-end success, with healthy viable chicks successfully hatched from the fully artificial construct. Its largely transparent design also enables continuous, real-time observation of embryo development and phenotypic expression throughout incubation, supporting direct visual confirmation of developmental milestones - a significant capability for de-extinction science where visual confirmation of edited lost traits is critical.
The lattice shell was 3D printed and designed for transition to injection molding for low-cost, high-volume production. It is explicitly size-scalable, with additional versions already under development that extend beyond the dimensions of any available surrogate species.
"The embryo needs a place to grow that recapitulates the gas exchange, humidity, and mechanical environment of a natural egg — at whatever size the species requires. Colossal's artificial egg solves the scalability dimension. It is a platform technology, and its implications extend well beyond any single species." said Dr. George Church, Co-Founder of Colossal and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.
The platform continues to advance through active refinement. Additional future engineering updates include the development of a self-hatching lattice structure, along with robotic-assisted earlier-stage embryo transfer protocols to reduce variability in starting material.
"The avian reproductive toolkit has lagged behind mammalian systems for decades because birds present unique developmental challenges. The artificial egg changes that. For species where surrogacy is impossible and genome recovery has outpaced our ability to use it, this is the missing piece: a controlled, scalable environment for development that is not limited by the availability of a host. It enables us to build critical internal expertise in avian exogenous development that does not exist elsewhere and will be essential across any de-extinction approach," said Dr Beth Shapiro, Chief Science Officer of Colossal.
ENABLING AVIAN DE-EXTINCTION
The South Island Giant Moa (Dinornis robustus) presents an incubation challenge unlike any other species in Colossal's portfolio. Moa eggs are estimated to have been approximately 80 times the volume of a chicken egg and roughly eight times the volume of an emu egg, placing them entirely beyond the capacity of any available avian surrogate. No living bird is large enough to serve as a host. A size-scaled artificial egg is the best route to exogenous development for this species, making the platform not just useful for the moa program but essential to it.
"We've created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate," said Professor Andrew Pask, Chief Biology Officer at Colossal. "It's a new system designed for long-term, healthy avian embryo development. The genome is the blueprint, but without a place to build, it's meaningless. The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate. It's species-agnostic, size-scalable, and unlocks entirely new pathways — from rescuing endangered birds with low hatch success to enabling de-extinction where no surrogate exists. We designed it with one priority: producing healthy animals that can thrive, not just hatch - mirroring the natural egg as much as possible."
CONSERVATION APPLICATIONS
Colossal's artificial egg expands what's possible in avian biology at a time of accelerating biodiversity loss, with more than half of bird species in decline, one in eight threatened with extinction, and nearly 3 billion birds lost in North America since 1970.
Beyond de-extinction, the platform addresses longstanding constraints in avian biology and has broad applications for conservation of threatened species. Many critically endangered birds are difficult to breed in captivity, and limited surrogate availability restricts the use of biobanked genetic material. The artificial egg provides a controlled environment for bird development that reduces environmental variability, enables rescue of compromised embryos, and removes the constraint of egg size from the production of healthy chicks.
It also advances avian genome engineering by enabling continuous, real-time access to developing embryos, allowing more precise and reproducible intervention and improved control of developmental conditions. This supports work in disease resistance, genetic rescue, and related applications.
Finally, the platform introduces true scalability for avian mass production, enabling standardized deployment across species and production volumes, and creating a controllable, industry-ready framework for biological research that has not previously been possible.
"The ability to incubate avian embryos outside a biological shell — at any size and in standard commercial incubators — is a capability conservation programs simply don't have today. We're building it for the moa, but it's designed to support critically endangered species broadly," said Matt James, Chief Animal Officer and head of The Colossal Foundation. "This represents a new platform for avian conservation. The artificial egg allows us to rescue compromised embryos, build genetic rescue platforms, and utilize donor and biobanked material in ways that weren't previously possible. It reflects deep collaboration across biology, engineering, and software — and opens entirely new pathways to help address the biodiversity crisis."
BIOTECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
Beyond conservation and de-extinction, the artificial egg has potential applications in biotechnology research, particularly in the development of genome-edited avian lines. Transgenic chickens are an emerging platform for producing recombinant therapeutic proteins in egg white, including monoclonal antibodies and human cytokines, at costs that are lower than conventional mammalian cell culture systems. A persistent bottleneck in developing these lines is the embryo manipulation required to introduce edited primordial germ cells and confirm germline transmission. The artificial egg's transparent design, engineered modular architecture and controlled environment provide direct, continuous access to the developing embryo throughout incubation, supporting the precision and reproducibility that genome editing workflows require. This positions the platform as a potentially useful tool for avian biotechnology research well beyond Colossal's own programs.
"While we built this system to solve a specific de-extinction biological scale problem, the platform we created has implications well beyond de-extinction. Any field that needs precise, scalable access to developing avian embryos now has a tool that didn't exist before." said Ben Lamm, CEO and Co-Founder at Colossal Biosciences.
COLOSSAL'S GROWING TOOLKIT
The artificial egg joins a growing suite of technologies Colossal has developed across its de-extinction and conservation programs designed to support gestation of embryos. This includes implantation devices that support early mammalian embryonic development and the Colossal Artificial Uterus to support the later stages of embryo growth across a range of our focus species from marsupials to placental mammals.
About Colossal Biosciences
Colossal was founded by emerging technology and software entrepreneur Ben Lamm and world-renowned geneticist and serial biotech entrepreneur George Church, Ph.D., and is the first to apply CRISPR technology for the purposes of species de-extinction. Colossal creates innovative technologies for species restoration, critically endangered species protection and the repopulation of critical ecosystems that support the continuation of life on Earth. Colossal is accepting humanity's duty to restore Earth to a healthier state, while also solving for the future economies and biological necessities of the human condition through cutting-edge science and technologies. To follow along, please visit: www.colossal.com.
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SOURCE Colossal Biosciences Inc.
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