British and American scientists have begun a revolutionary project that overturns all our theories of life and death, working to bring a bird extinct since the seventeenth century back to life.
The bird to be revived is the dodo, which lived in Mauritius in the middle of the Indian Ocean until the end of the 17th century, and became extinct due to the large arrival of sailors on the island, and hunting it in large numbers.
The Return from the Dead project is implemented by Colossal Bioscience in Texas, based on studying the bird's DNA, checking its genomic sequences, and then finding the bird closest to it in terms of breed, in our time.
Researchers have previously conducted a successful experiment when the duck embryo, with germ cells from chickens, developed rooster-like DNA, based on DNA techniques, genetic modification and synthetic biology.
Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is heading the project, said the world was currently in extinction crisis and that his company was leveraging bioscience techniques to bring back extinct animals such as the Tasmanian tiger and mammoths as well as the Dodo.
He said the company had "genetic sequences" from the bird's ancient DNA, the remains of which were found in Denmark.
The project faces several obstacles, due to the difficulty of programming cells from a bird close to Dodo with the DNA of the extinct bird.
