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21 December 2017

New Clarity

Seeing inside living tissues without cutting them into little bits used to be difficult – opaque materials like fats just get in the way. But bathing this mouse pancreas in a recipe of chemicals removes these barriers, while leaving cells and proteins intact, to make the organ almost transparent. This technique, called CLARITY, is similar to another used to make ‘glassy’ brains. Here, see-through scans of the pancreas are assembled into a 3D model that can be zoomed around. Artificial green and red fluorescent proteins highlight the islets of Langerhans, clusters of cells which squirt hormones into the bloodstream, helping to control the body’s metabolism. CLARITY helps to show how the islets disperse throughout the pancreas during development, and identify genes essential to these patterns. Hints from mice could help researchers to understand how human islets are disrupted in Type 1 diabetes.

Written by John Ankers

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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