A video of Japanese high school students hatching a chicken egg without a shell has gone viral over the past few days. According to the narration in the video, which was posted by Spoon & Tamago, "they [referring to the Japanese students] are the first in the world to successfully hatch an egg out of its shell."
This video has over 53 million views on Facebook and other versions have popped up on YouTube and other web sites.
While it was truly a remarkable accomplishment for such young people to succeed on this experiment, it turns out that hatching an egg without the shell is nothing new and scientists have been using this technique for decades. This is according to an digital media company, The Daily Dot.
Dubbed as the "hometown newspaper" of the internet, The Daily Dot tells untold stories unfolding online, with 50-70 articles published per day. Looks like this online publication seeks for truth and has the penchant for scrutiny as any investigative journalist should be.
According to an article published on The Daily Dot page, the earliest online 'traces' of shell-less (or ex-ovo) culture technique was published in The Journal of Poultry Science in 1971.
Another article published in 1981 discusses culturing chicken embryos in petri dishes. The full article, written by a Steven R. Scadding, can be downloaded via PDF in the University of California website (requires login).
There was another paper published in 1993 with a discussion on "Chick Embryos in Shell-less Culture." This was written by a Cynthia Fisher, a PhD in Zoology from Rutgers University. The paper mentioned attempts on the techniques as early as 1960s and that the technique was finally refined in 1974.
Also, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in 2010 published an online article "An ex-ovo Chicken Embryo Culture System Suitable for Imaging and Microsurgery Applications." This article has a comprehensive abstract and detailed steps on the process. The online page also includes a video which can be downloaded.
Several techniques have been developed as far as the ex-ovo technique is concerned. Some involve incubating the eggs in the shell for three days before transferring to a petri dish.
The technique the Japanese students used appears to be the same technique mentioned in a 2014 research, titled "A Novel Shell-less Culture System for Chick Embryos Using a Plastic Film as Culture Vessels." This was published by Japan Poultry Science Association.
It's more than just replacing the egg shell with a plastic wrap and putting them in the incubator. This requires flawless sterile techniques and the amount of oxygen, humidity and calcium in the whole system need to be carefully monitored.
In addition, the permeability to gases of the plastic wrap is also considered to allow oxygen and carbon dioxide to pass, letting the embryo chick breathe during the incubation process.
Photo: University of California Press
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