Monday, August 22, 2016

uDISCO-Tech

uDISCO mouse image from Business Insider
New laboratory methods shrink dead tissues and make them transparent. It may not be clear to laypeople, but this technique can be very revealing:
To turn dead mice and rats into smaller, clear versions of their former selves, the team used special solutions that strip tissues of fats that typically make them opaque. They also pull out water, miniaturizing tissues.

The new technique—dubbed uDISCO (short for ultimate 3-D imaging of solvent-cleared organs)—takes about four days to shrink and make a whole animal, including its bones, transparent....

Shrinkage gives scientists the ability to study intact organs and organisms in one go, the researchers said, upping their chances of understanding how they work and what goes wrong during disease.
When the time comes, I can be buried in the jeans I used to wear in high school.

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