Yellow food dye could give doctors a new way to look beneath the skin

A dye commonly found in food and cosmetics can be used to reversibly turn the surface tissues of a living mouse transparent. The novel technique, which the researchers call counterintuitive, requires no specialised equipment and allows the direct visualisation of anatomical features like muscle fibres, blood vessels and organs.

‘To make transparent mice in life is one of the dreams in our field,’ explains Hiroki Ueda, a synthetic biologist at Riken Centre for Biosystems Dynamics Research in Japan, who was not involved in the study.