Japan scientists produce see-through laboratory mice

Using a method that almost completely removes colour 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 will 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.

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.

Kazuki Tainaka, lead author of the research published in Cell magazine

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 a statement on the study that the process could be used to study how embryos develop or how cancer and autoimmune diseases develop at the cellular level, as well as lead to a deeper understanding and perhaps to new therapeutic strategies for them. A similar technique was also shared by scientists from the California Institute of Technology in the same magazine in late July.

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.

Hiroki Ueda, lead researcher behind Japan’s “see-through” mice

see-through mice Science