Scientists find a common food dye can make a live mouse's skin transparent
- Reference: 1725858238
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/09/09/food_dye_skin_transparent/
- Source link:
The dye – tartrazine, aka E102 – is a mostly-harmless dye used to make food yellow. In [1]a paper published in the journal Science last week, scientists describe how the dye’s interaction with light allowed them to see through a living mouse’s skin and observe its organs. In another experiment, they made a thin slice of chicken breast temporarily transparent.
“We combined the yellow dye, which is a molecule that absorbs most light, especially blue and ultraviolet light, with skin, which is a scattering medium. Individually, these two things block most light from getting through them,” [2]said Zihao Ou, assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Dallas.
[3]
"But when we put them together, we were able to achieve transparency of the mouse skin," Ou stated. "For those who understand the fundamental physics behind this, it makes sense; but if you aren’t familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick.”
[4]
[5]
The physics Ou referred to is the “refractive index” – the measure of how much a substance bends light. If a substance bends most light, it scatters on a surface.
“The ‘magic’ happens because dissolving the light-absorbing molecules in water changes the solution’s refractive index … in a way that matches the refractive index of tissue components like lipids,” Ou and team explained.
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Dissolving the dye in water and applying it to a mouse’s skin therefore means light passes through the skin.
[7]Youtube Video
The effect is easily stopped – just wash off the dye. Any colorant absorbed by the body will be expelled in the urine, the paper states.
[8]
“As soon as we rinsed and massaged the skin with water, the effect was reversed within minutes,” [9]said Guosong Hong, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and senior author on the paper. “It’s a stunning result.”
By now, you're probably wondering if this could be part of the ultimate Halloween costume, a point raised immediately by one Register hack. But the researchers haven't tested it on humans yet, pointing out that some dyes can be toxic if used incorrectly, and that human skin is around ten times thicker than that of a mouse. However, you can still try it out using 3 mm slices of chicken breast as the National Science Foundation has produced [10]a guide [PDF] for home experimenters.
[11]Google Lens now can spot problematic skin spots, or not
[12]Bacterial byproducts may help stop the stink in future spacesuits
[13]'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city
[14]Wrongful termination lawsuit accuses Neuralink of Herpes B-infected monkey business
The discovery has many potential practical applications. Medicine has numerous ways to look beneath our skin - from X-rays to MRI scanning, but these can carry potential health risks and are usually expensive. Having a cheap, easily available dye do the job could be a game changer.
“Our research group is mostly academics, so one of the first things we thought of when we saw the results of our experiments was how this might improve biomedical research,” Ou said.
“Optical equipment, like the microscope, is not directly used to study live humans or animals because light can’t go through living tissue. But now that we can make tissue transparent, it will allow us to look at more detailed dynamics. It will completely revolutionize existing optical research in biology.”
The next stage in the research is to try this out with thicker human skin and get the dosage right for this to achieve the same effects. Ou also wants to try other ingredients to see if he can get an even clearer look inside the body. ®
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[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm6869
[2] https://news.utdallas.edu/science-technology/yellow-dye-solution-transparent-skin-2024/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Zt7HRGUkEvAauRRhUbQVigAAANg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zt7HRGUkEvAauRRhUbQVigAAANg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zt7HRGUkEvAauRRhUbQVigAAANg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Zt7HRGUkEvAauRRhUbQVigAAANg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp-kwQAcYyA&t=3s
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Zt7HRGUkEvAauRRhUbQVigAAANg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/09/using-a-common-food-dye-researchers-made-mouse-skin-transparent
[10] https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/USNSF-YellowNumber5_Activity.pdf
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/google_lens_skin_spots/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/01/bacterial_byproducts_spacesuits_tests/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/13/cat_chemical_vat_japan/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/17/neuralink_monkey_attack_lawsuit/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: See right through you
That’s exactly what it does. But now you have to worry about getting your bones bleached and maybe a vein vejazzle!
Does it work on cotton?
Tartrazine is pretty awful stuff
It's known to cause significant behavioural issues in children, and large consumption has been linked with heart attacks in healthy adults (eg after drinking a few litres of dilute or soda on a hot day).
Several countries have banned its use in drinks and sweets aimed at children due to the above effects. A few places (eg Austria, Germany & Norway) have banned it from food entirely.
I hope they can find an alternative dye, as the effect requires quite a significant exposure.
Re: Tartrazine is pretty awful stuff
I hope they can find an alternative dye, as the effect requires quite a significant exposure
Good, I'm glad it is harmful to humans. I don't want this to be something people can do, and I think most people would agree.
Re: Tartrazine is pretty awful stuff
Did you not read the bit about very useful biomedical applications?
Would be nice if there were actual shots of the transparent skin in the video, rather than an animation. The actual images shown on other articles makes it clear that it's just kind of transparent, dark, not at all clear (like seeing something out of focus), and requires a special laser imaging technique rather than just being able to look at it even with a microscope, so it's not going to really make it possible to just look to make diagnoses or anything, but of course it's just a first version.
Was going to say the same. The effect may well be real, but the picture which overlays a static photo of (human?) skin with a picture of blood vessels beneath is clearly fake.
Contamination
What would happen if either there is contamination to the "orange stuff" that Trump puts on his skin, or, mistakenly or even deliberately uses Tartrazine instead?
Good thing that invisibility is not total as in the Invisible Man, else just think of the mischief he will get up to
Re: Contamination
What would happen if either there is contamination to the "orange stuff" that Trump puts on his skin, or, mistakenly or even deliberately uses Tartrazine instead?
He'd look even more ridiculous than his bad orange skin cream already makes him look?
An old friend of mine named Jones
Would sit there and grumble and moan
For he bought x-ray specses
To see through girl's dresses
But all he could see was their bones!
Re: An old friend of mine named Jones
Thanks for that. I do have a friend called Jones and it fits perfectly :)
animation only .... because we need funding for more research and reality sucks with gullible investors/funders !
Science R&D, even intresting stuff like this, is its own worst enemy :(
Sounds simple enough to do. I wonder how many people have tried it on themselves already since this made the news, risks be damned? If it works on humans there'll be pictures on the net somewhere pretty soon.
I tried it on my willy, now I have a divorce
See right through you
Here I was, hoping to find something for a clearer complexion.