Animal Lovers
Corner: Japanese scientists have created a transparent
frog  Friday, September 27th,
2007

This is happy news for frogs
everywhere! And the students that don't want to dissect
them. I remember when I was in high school and failed all three of
the dissection assignment projects because I refused to do them: a
sheep's eye, a frog, and a pig fetus. My Biology teacher
couldn't answer my question of whether or not they had died of natural
causes. Luckily my lab partner was really hot, so I got to watch
him instead of the stuff he had to dissect because I wouldn't touch
it. I should have gotten an A for principle....but science
teachers aren't into that so much.
Japanese scientists have created this
phenomenon by using traditional selective breeding (instead of genetic
modification), and by mating the palest wild frogs they could
find, the researchers have come up with a frog whose internal
organs, eggs, and blood vessels can be seen without dissection.
Professor Masayuki Sumida led the project at the Institute for Amphibian
Biology at Hiroshima University. The scientists plan to patent
their technique after it's completely perfected (the frog above is still
somewhat milky-colored).
"You can see through the skin how organs
grow, how cancer starts and develops," Sumida has said. "You can
watch organs of the same frog over its entire life as you don't have to
dissect it...you can see dramatic changes of organs when tadpoles mutate
into frogs."
Many underwater creatures are transluscent
naturally. Jellyfish, sea snails, octupi, sea monkeys, and other
marine creatures have evolved transparent skin as a form of
camouflage.
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