Japanese Scientists Have Invented A Technique That Makes A Mouse See-Through

Japanese researchers have found ways to make a mouse transparent. They can use a method that removes colour from tissue but also kills the mouse. They can examine each organ or even an entire body without cutting it up, which gives them a "bigger picture" insight into issues they are dealing with.

Kazuki Tainaka, the lead author of a research paper published in the U.S.-based Cell

magazine, said that the new techniques help them to get an insight or "new understanding of the 3D structure of organs and how certain genes are expressed in various tissues." In a statement issued by Japanese research institute RIKEN and its collaborators, he said that the team was amazed that the infant and adult mice bodies could be made "nearly transparent," he said.

According to io9.com, researchers employed a technique called CUBIC, or Clear, Unobstructed Brain Imaging Cocktails and Computational Analysis, which can remove all the color from tissues. This technique is a great lever to help the scientists click images of the mouse's brains, hearts, lungs, kidneys, and livers.

The work involved the University of Tokyo as well as the Japan Science and Technology Agency, concentrating on haem, a constituent that lends red colour to blood and is found in most tissues of the body. However, the work meant putting a saline solution through its heart, pushing the blood out of its circulatory system and killing it.

It also involved the injection of a reagent's introduction, which took out the haem from the haemoglobin. The dead mouse was then skinned and soaked in the reagent for two weeks to finalise the task.

They beamed a shaft of laser light that could go upto one specific level, building up a total image of the body, somewhat like a 3D printer that created objects in layers. Tainaka said that it was a step ahead of the microscope, which allows us to look into things is detail, but does not offer us a peek into its context. However, this new technique still cannot be applied to living things, but will help us to grasp details, even as it enables us to get a holistic picture of various things.

Why is this such a mindblowing experiment? It will help scientists to explore into organs and tissues in the lab and even help us to diagnose illnesses in humans, according to Washington Post.

Hiroki Ueda, who led the research team, felt that it would be a guide to tell us how embryos, cancer and autoimmune diseases develop at the cellular level. He did hope that the technique would help us to shift to understand a technique of understanding such diseases more deeply, perhaps even therapeutic strategies quickly. He hoped that it could enable the scientists to achieve one of their biggest aspirations: "organism-level systems biology based on whole-body imaging at single-cell resolution."