Researchers in Japan have developed a way to make mice almost totally transparent.
Using a method that almost completely removes color from tissue — and kills the mouse in the process — researchers say they can now examine individual organs or even whole bodies without slicing into them, offering a “bigger picture” view of the problems they are working on.
The techniques are expected to give scientists a “new understanding of the 3D structure of organs and how certain genes are expressed in various tissues,” said Kazuki Tainaka, the lead author of a research paper published in the US-based Cell magazine.
Photo: AFP
“We were very surprised that the entire body of infant and adult mice could be made nearly transparent,” he said in a statement issued by Japanese research institute RIKEN and its collaborators.
The work, which also involved the University of Tokyo and the Japan Science and Technology Agency, focuses on a compound called heme, the constituent that gives blood its red color and is found in most tissues of the body.
The process involves pumping a saline solution through the mouse’s heart, pushing the blood out of its circulatory system and killing the creature.
A reagent is then introduced, which works to divorce the heme from the hemoglobin that remains in the animal’s organs.
The mouse is skinned and soaked in the reagent for up to two weeks to complete the process.
A sheet of laser light, which can be set to penetrate to a specific level, builds up a complete image of the body, much as a 3D printer creates physical objects in layers.
“Microscopes have so far allowed us to look at things in minute detail, but that has also deprived us of the context of what we are looking at,” Tainaka told reporters.
The new method, which cannot be applied to living things, “will give us details while enabling us to grasp the bigger picture,” he said.
Hiroki Ueda, who led the research team, said in the statement that the method “could be used to study how embryos develop or how cancer and autoimmune diseases develop at the cellular level.
It was hoped the method would lead “to a deeper understanding of such diseases and perhaps to new therapeutic strategies.”
“It could lead to the achievement of one of our great dreams: organism-level systems biology based on whole-body imaging at single-cell resolution.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN