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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