Create accountLogin

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Not available on mstdn.science.
mstdn.science is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
http://mstdn.science is a place for scientists and science enthusiasts to discuss research and topics surrounding our work.

Administered by:

Server stats:

501
active users

mstdn.science: AboutProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.8

Moritz Negwer

In case anyone was following the recent Science paper about using Tartrazine for , apparently there is at least one (competing) group that couldn't reproduce it and wrote a preprint about it:

Tartrazine cannot make live tissues transparent
doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.29.615

Discussion on Pubpeer, including the Tartrazine paper's author's response:
pubpeer.com/publications/81314

bioRxiv · Tartrazine cannot make live tissues transparentA recent study claimed that a strongly absorbing dye, tartrazine, can achieve optical transparency in live animals. However, this study only achieved optical clearing of dead cells. It is impossible to make live mammalian tissues transparent with tartrazine solution. ### Competing Interest Statement S.I. and T.I. have filed a patent application related to SeeDB-Live.
#lightsheet#microscopy#tartrazine
Oct 02, 2024, 09:30 AM·Public·Web
8boosts·7favorites
Quiet public
Johannes

@moritz_negwer
The mouse are argument makes little sense to me - the preprint uses older (3 month) and younger (3 day-7 day) mice - if the method works only for skinny 4 wk old mice, that is quite a limit. The second point about application (gel vs solution) might hold true, difficult to judge.
As tartrazine is easy to get and the claimed protocol simple, I expect more replication attempts ought to follow soon (the two examples the authors list in the google doc aren’t convincing).

Quiet public
Moritz Negwer

@johannes_lehmann I agree, the mouse argument sounds a bit specious. If anything, I'd have expected young mice to clear more easily.
Interestingly, in point 3.3 of the protocol the authors imply that the clearing won't work on nude mice. Are those mice known to have more subcutaneous fat and thicker skin to compensate for the absence of a fur coat, for example? Or could there maybe be an unexpected interaction with a component of the hair removal cream they used for their Bl6 mice?

Quiet public
Moritz Negwer

@johannes_lehmann Regardless, I agree that with the protocol claiming to be so simple (and Tartrazine being so cheap), many groups will try to replicate it. I expect the field as a whole to have a good handle on the details quite quickly.

Public
Stephen Royle

@moritz_negwer I just saw that the preprint has been withdrawn biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/20

bioRxiv · WITHDRAWN: Tartrazine cannot make live tissues transparentThe authors have withdrawn their manuscript because one of the conclusions was wrong. The authors sincerely apologize to Ou et al. and the research community for the confusion. In this preprint, the authors performed an abdominal skin clearing experiment following the methods section in Ou et al. (ref. 1) and observed only a marginal clearing effect. In this condition (Figure 1), the authors detected tartrazine only in the stratum corneum (SC) of the skin, where only dead cells are present (Figure 1E, F). However, following a more detailed protocol with additional tips kindly provided by Ou et al. (ref. 1), the abdominal skin became more transparent. It seems that mechanical damage to the SC barrier is critical for successful clearing. In this condition, the authors detected strong tartrazine signals under the SC, including the dermis where live cells are located. We are still concerned about the issue of osmolality and toxicity to live cells; cleared cells must be under hypertonic conditions (Figure 3 and 4). However, since Figure 1 (especially Figure 1E, F) no longer stands, and the title can be misinterpreted as if the original results (ref. 1) were irreproducible, the authors believe it is best to withdraw this preprint. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author. ### Competing Interest Statement S.I. and T.I. have filed a patent application related to SeeDB-Live.
Quiet public
Moritz Negwer

@steveroyle wow, that was quick. Well spotted, thanks!

On a meta level, I think it's amazing to see this discussion happening in real time, and on (relatively) civilized terms. This would have played out very differently in the pre-preprint era, I think - maybe with a protracted series of letters to the editors of various journals?

Quiet public
Stephen Royle

@moritz_negwer I guess preprint critics would say that rapid communication fuels the drama. But I agree with you, it's better to have the critique out there so that people are aware.

Quiet public
Moritz Negwer

@steveroyle There's some truth in that, but imo more general than only just preprints - also in this case part of the discussion happened on pubpeer, gdocs and (presumably) Twitter.

I think this kind of fast and accessible experiment is also particularly well-suited for the format of a fast online discussion. If the repeat experiments had required a year of data gathering on an exotic machine, the discussion could have gotten a lot more heated in the meantime.

ExploreLive feeds
About