Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences announced a new AI platform called GenoMorph on Oct. 14. The company is known for its effort to bring back extinct animals, including the woolly mammoth, dire wolf and dodo.
The platform predicts which parts of an animal's genetic code are linked to physical traits, such as beak shape. Colossal said it has already helped identify about 2,300 regions of DNA that could be used in gene editing for the dodo. Anna Keyte, the company's avian species director, said GenoMorph is a type of machine learning software. It uses genetic data from chickens, quail, ducks and pigeons, along with genomes and skull measurements from more than 70 bird species, including the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo's closest living relative.
Beth Shapiro, Colossal's chief science officer, said the tool can find patterns that people could not find on their own. The dodo is believed to have gone extinct around 1690 due to hunting, habitat destruction and predation by invasive species. Colossal has just one dodo genome for its research, which makes it hard to tell which genetic differences define a dodo.