You might have seen transparent mouse used to point icons on laptop/computer, a transparent cell phone or a transparent screen, but transparent mouse (rodent), no way! Read how researchers created a transparent mouse for you.
Mice form and important part of research now-a-days. Most of the experiments are carried on mice because of their striking similarity to humans in most matters. In-fact mice can be manipulated and used to treat human diseases.
Transparent mice offer complete anatomical view. One can see all of the organs including brain. Although there have been several studies where in individual organs were made transparent, but this paper is the first one to describe whole body tissue clearing.
The researchers have proposed a method for whole-body clearing by delivering clarifying agents. Passive clarity technique (PACT), perfusion-assisted agent/release in-situ (PARS) and Refractive index matching solution (RIMS) are the advanced techniques/chemicals used for tissue extraction. These techniques have been successfully utilized by the researchers to craft optically transparent organisms. Not only can one see through the organs, but can also analyze things at sub-cellular, cellular and single-molecule levels.
The Authors of the paper mention that,
“PARS opens up the possibility of whole-organ and whole-organism mapping with high phenotypic content. With this in mind, quick, low-resolution scanning of large tissue blocks can direct investigators to restricted areas worthy of slow, high phenotypic content analysis, including smFISH: a method that preserves fluorescent markers long-term is particularly valuable in this respect.”
Possible applications of PARS include:
1. Improved screening throughput, by eliminating the need to section individual tissues.
2. Improvement in existing therapies and can lead a way for novel new therapeutic strategies.
3. Screening of cancerous and tumor cells.
4. Accurate postmortem quantification.
5. More advancement in neuroscience.
6. Treatment of diseases like autism and chronic pain.
7. Locate hidden viruses in the tissues and monitor metastasis of cancer.
For some of the really cool pictures and images taken by the team of this paper please check out the original paper. Wonderful, you will see that it looks more decorated art than images.
Citation:
Single-Cell Phenotyping within Transparent Intact Tissue through Whole-Body Clearing
Bin Yang, Jennifer B. Treweek, Rajan P. Kulkarni, Benjamin E. Deverman, Chun-Kan Chen, Eric Lubeck, Sheel Shah, Long Cai, Viviana Gradinaruemail
Dailyomics 