See through frogs cut out dissection

See through frogs cut out dissection.

Dissection. The very sound of it sends many running for the door, grab a bucket, or faint quietly in the corner. Besides who wants to see the innards of an animal spill out onto the table?

These reactions provoked by the ‘fear of the scalpel’ are addressed by the empathetic Japanese, who have developed the first see through frog.

That’s right, frogs with transparent skin, so clear with all organs exposed. Rather than cutting, slicing and dicing frogs, we can now simply sit, stare and watch a live frog, function before our eyes.

The mechanics of this simple genius, operated by the Hiroshima University team led by Masayuki Sumida, involved breeding, via artificial insemination, a variety of Japanese brown garden frogs or Rena japonica frogs, which contain a recessive gene that express light coloured skin (ochre or brown.)

These transparent amphibians can be quite handy in the field of research to study: organ, blood vessel and egg development, how organs such as bones and the liver respond to toxins, drugs and chemicals and observe tumours such as cancer.

The Hiroshima team admit that it’s unlikely that other animals, such as the rat, can undergo the same ‘transformation’ due to completely different skin structures and therefore would require a different approach.

Whether these transparent wonders help to solve the debate of ‘saying no to dissection’, this little breakthrough is still very cool in the field of genetics.

Tammy Chan

Links:

1. Primary:

http://daybydayhsing.blogspot.com/2007/09/see-through-frog.html http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/it2019s-not-easy-being-seen http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/09/27/seethroughfrog_ani.html?category=animals&guid=20070927100000http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iPhJK96-Bi8jDR5Qhshe82mnazSA

2. Secondary:

- Video link - http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071001-frogs-video.html
- Sumida’s past research links - http://lib.bioinfo.pl/auid:1434340
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-484072/Scientists-create-worlds-frog.html