The research team demonstrated a simple method for creating opaque organs, bodies, and human tissue without disrupting the cellular structure. The study was published in the July 31 edition of Cell Press. The finding could lead to a better understanding of brain-body interactions and more accurate clinical diagnoses.
“Although the idea of tissue clearing has been around for a century, to our knowledge, this is the first study to perform whole-body clearing, as opposed to first extracting and then clearing organs outside the adult body,” said senior study author Viviana Gradinaru of the California Institute of Technology.
I’ve done this with fish, and it took close to a month to make a fish the size of a jelly bean translucent. This seems much more viable for larger animals. Since we do surgery in the lab, I think this might be a very interesting way to get a very clear way of seeing how the intervention is working in the mouse.
Right now we use X-Rays, which allows the mouse to continue living. This procedure seems to be terminal, but the visuals seem MUCH more clear!
H/T Farm Dad
