Why Scientists Created See-through, Shrunken, Glow-in-the-dark Mice

A whole rat made transparent with uDISCO (Credit: Ali Ertuerk) When Victorian anatomists wanted to take a peek under the skin, they were forced to cut into the very objects they meant to study. It was really their only option, of course, as techniques such as X-rays and MRIs wouldn't enter the lab for many years. Today, scientists can see into bodies without ever opening them up, but their visualizations still fail to completely capture their subjects' inner essence. The stubborn opacity of skin and organs defeats our eyes. To give us an altogether new form of insight, researchers are making the bodies we want to peer into entirely transparent. The idea of leaching the color from organic structures has existed for several years now, but researchers from Germany say that they have created the most effective method to date. And, not only are these mice transparent, they glow in the dark as well. The technique also shrinks the mice down to about a third of their former volume, leaving the researchers with a tiny, see-through mouse that glows radioactive green.