Chickens without eggs? De-extinction company creates artificial egg.

Colossal announced an artificial eggshell that allows most of avian embryonic development to occur without the eggshell. Egg contents are transferred into a specially designed container within a day or two of laying, and normal chicks can hatch and walk away from the container. The approach could provide a useful tool for developmental biology by enabling more continuous observation of development than traditional egg-window methods. In chicken research, embryos can be accessed by creating a hole, performing manipulations, and sealing the egg, but this limits observations to the manipulation time point and the later endpoint. The new system aims to overcome that constraint while supporting goals related to reversing extinction.

"Colossal announced its newest development on the road to its announced goal: reversing the extinction of species, in this case, avian species. The development itself is essentially an artificial eggshell, one that allows almost the entire developmental process to occur without the shell. The company transferred the contents of eggs to their specially designed container within a day or two of laying and were able to have normal chicks walk away from it."

"For part of my career, I studied the development of vertebrates using chickens. While they're less closely related to us than something like mice, the basics of their development are largely the same. And, unlike mice, they develop outside of their mother's body. If you're careful, you can chip away a hole in the egg, perform manipulations on the developing embryo, and then seal it back up with some tape. The chicken embryo will keep developing, allowing you to see the impact of what you've done on normal development."

"Manipulations include everything from surgically removing key tissues to implanting beads soaked with signaling molecules to injecting DNA into cells to instruct them to make a different set of proteins. Any of these can alter the development of the embryo, telling us things about the factors that are normally required. While this has been incredibly powerful, it provides us with a limited view of key events."

"That's because you're only allowed two time points: the moment you perform the manipulations, "

Read at Ars Technica