[ExI] Transparent mice and brain scanning

Dave Sill sparge at gmail.com
Tue Aug 23 11:42:17 UTC 2016


http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/see-through-mice-may-soon-substitute-live-animals-n635951

*Researchers have developed a way to make a mouse transparent — by removing
the liquids and fats from its tissue. *


* They hope their method can be used to make a complete, unsliced model of
a human brain, with all the delicate nerve connections untouched. And they
say their see-through mouse might reduce the need for lab scientists around
the world to kill living mice just to study their organs. *


*"Now, for the first time, we have a powerful tool that can make the human
brain transparent and reduce it size to fit an imaging microscope for
mapping," Ali Ertürk, a brain researcher at Ludwig Maximilians University
of Munich in Germany, said in written comments. *

*The method, described in the journal Nature Methods, is called ultimate
DISCO (short for 3-D imaging of solvent-cleared organs). It not only makes
it possible to see entire structures in place, but shrinks the body so that
it fits under a microscope. *

* "We expect that this method is easily applicable to small monkeys, even
to a whole human brain in the near future," Erturk wrote. *

* "We all know the big fuss (rightfully) around mapping the human brain.
But so far there is not any approach that even comes close to mapping any
part of human brain at individual neuron level." *
...

The video shows an imaged mouse nervous system.

-Dave
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