A common food dye found in the popular snack Doritos can turn a mouse’s skin transparent, according to a new study conducted by scientists at Stanford University. In the paper titled Achieving Optical Transparency in Live Animals with Absorbing Molecules, published in the journal Science on September 5, researchers detailed how they were able to see through the skin of live mice.
Dye found in Doritos turns mouse’s skin transparent
The experiment headed by Dr. Zihao Ou, assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, was conducted in a quest to find better methods to see tissue and organs within the body. Researchers applied a mixture of water and tartrazine, a common food dye known as FD&C Yellow 5, to make the skin on the skulls and abdomens of live mice transparent.
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“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,” Ou said in a description of the research on the university’s website. “It takes a few minutes for the transparency to appear. It’s similar to the way a facial cream or mask works: The time needed depends on how fast the molecules diffuse into the skin.”
“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. But when we put them together, we were able to achieve transparency of the mouse skin,” Ou explained. As the skin of the skull turned transparent, researchers were able to directly observe blood vessels on the surface of the mouse’s brain.
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Meanwhile, in the abdomen, they were able to observe the internal organs and muscle contractions in the digestive tract. The release notes that scientists have not yet tested the process on humans. Ou explained that since human skin is about 10 times thicker than mice’s, it is not clear what dosage of the dye or delivery method would be necessary to penetrate the entire thickness.
Explaining the application of the findings of this research in the medical field, Ou said, “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.” “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.”