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Scientists Engineer See-Through Fish

LiveScience.com,
By JEANNA BRYNER
Posted: 2008-02-06 22:48:52
Filed Under: Science News
LiveScience.com


(Feb. 6) - A newly bred fish bares all in the lab, revealing brain, heart and other internal organs in the name of research.

Scientists are breeding zebrafish with see-through bodies in order to make studying disease processes easier, including the spread of cancer.

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Richard White, Children's Hospital Boston

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Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston bred zebrafish with transparent bodies in a bid to better understand how diseases spread. Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans in many ways. Scientists hope the see-through fish will help them identify what triggers certain cancers to metastasize.

The transparent fish, described in the Feb. 7 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, are allowing researchers at Children's Hospital Boston to directly view fish's internal organs and observe processes such as tumor growth in real-time in living organisms.

Scientists previously studied disease in the embryos of zebrafish, which are naturally transparent. But their clear bodies turn opaque when they grow into adults. The newly created zebrafish stays transparent throughout its lifetime.

"Everything after four weeks has been invisible to us," said study team member Richard White, a clinical fellow in the Stem Cell Program at Children's Hospital Boston.

Zebrafish are genetically similar to humans in many ways and serve as good models for human biology and disease.

Traditionally, researchers have relied on information collected after the diseased animal died to infer anything about human ailments. But for rapidly changing processes such as cancer, this snapshot method is bound to miss something. "It's like taking a photograph when you need a video," said White, also an instructor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

Fish Exposed

White created the transparent fish, which he nicknamed Casper, by mating two existing zebrafish breeds, one that lacked a reflective skin pigment and the other without black pigment. The offspring had only yellow skin pigment, essentially appearing clear.

Nature News From LiveScience.com

In one experiment, White and his colleagues inserted a fluorescent melanoma tumor into the abdominal cavity of the transparent fish. By observing the fish under a microscope, they found that the cancer cells started spreading within five days. White could actually see individual cells spreading.

"The process by which a tumor goes from being localized to widespread and ultimately fatal is the most vexing problem that oncologists face," White said. "We don't know why cancer cells decide to move away from their primary site to other parts in the body."

The spreading melanoma cells appeared to flock toward the skin after leaving the abdominal cavity. "This told us that when tumor cells spread to other parts in the body, they don't do it randomly," White said. "They know where to go."

Stem Cells

White ran a similar experiment in which he transplanted fluorescent blood-forming stem cells from another zebrafish into a transparent one. By four weeks, the stem cells had visibly moved into the see-through fish's bone marrow and started growing.

Marrow, the soft fatty tissue inside bones, supports stem cells that each ultimately become a type of blood cell, which gets released into the bloodstream. Any disease that disrupts the production of mature blood cells or their precursors can cause a bone marrow disorder, such as leukemia.

While transplants of blood-forming stem cells help cancer patients rebuild healthy blood, for unknown reasons some transplants don't "take." If researchers could understand the step-by-step process in which the stem cells embed and build blood in the fish, they could figure out ways to help patients rebuild their blood faster.

(c) 1999-2007 Imaginova Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

2008-02-06 15:43:33
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303 comments

vaticanarizona 06:18:53 AM Feb 18 2008

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This is the best See-Through fish I've ever seen through.

Go to prove that Man is the greatest living creature in the world.

lawrencetucson 12:49:03 AM Feb 11 2008

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Very nice fish. I wish I had two. You could use them as night lights.

drabbing 10:57:33 AM Feb 08 2008

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I'm a bit confused by the article. I still don't see how this will help fight cancer in humans.

rowanntn 04:53:08 AM Feb 08 2008

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SCIENCE DID NOT CREATE THE SEE THRU FISH THERE ALREADY WAS ONE . SO IN EFFECT THEY JUST WASTED MONEY.

vaticanarizona 03:43:21 AM Feb 08 2008

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Oh, dear me, I'm at the wrong thread.

Well, very nice fish.

How much are they?

jennybdanza 10:50:21 PM Feb 07 2008

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Really, this one is my favorite:

“let the fish Be free don't keep fish trapped let them swim the oceans. nobody likes to be trapped so why trap a fish and then torture it with diseaseâ€

The day you are tortured with a disease is the day you will realize how foolish you sound. These scientists work everyday to improve the quality of human life to be critisized by ignorant people. Believe me, watching you grandparent, mother, father, sister or brother die of cancer is FAR more devistating than watching a geneticaly engineered fish die in a peitree dish. Have some loyalty to your own species. You should be thanking these people! Lets get real…….

nerdystud399 08:11:02 PM Feb 07 2008

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jdseabourn how old are you? Are you eight or something?? Again you said something stupid "Its amasing how smart scientest can be and yet be so stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" learn how to spell or did your Christian parents home school the wrong way?? I swear one more of your post I'm gonna have to make fun of you :D
To be a positive role model to you, you should keep practicing and reading that bible of yours to increase your grammar. Because you'll need it to disprove all the hard facts science comes out. For example gravity, cellular respiration, and that the earth revolves around the sun. But we all know it is the sun the revolves around us right?

psgamgaz 05:34:55 PM Feb 07 2008

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PINHOLE EYE GLASSES THAT RESTORE VISION?????
http://pinhole-eyeglasses.blogspot.com

snake23011 04:05:10 PM Feb 07 2008

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let the fish Be free don't keep fish trapped let them swim the oceans. nobody likes to be trapped so why trap a fish and then torture it with disease

smotzbott 03:23:58 PM Feb 07 2008

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hi

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