How scientists engineered a see-through squid with its brain in plain view

Flying Squid@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 83 points –
npr.org

As a fellow member of order decapodiformes, I am, of course, mortified.

15

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Once these squid are genetically altered, "they're really hard to spot," even for their caretakers, says Joshua Rosenthal, a senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

The see-through version is made possible by a gene editing technology called CRISPR, which became popular nearly a decade ago.

Because even unaltered squid have clear blood, thin skin, and no bones, the albinos are all but transparent unless light hits them at just the right angle.

Albertin lets me look over the shoulder of a technician who's looking through a microscope at a squid embryo smaller than a BB pellet.

Later, she'll use a quartz needle to inject the embryo with genetic material that will delete the pigment genes and create a transparent squid.

Soltesz and Niell inserted a fluorescent dye into an area of the brain that processes visual information.


The original article contains 681 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

It's starting to feel like I'm learning that biological life is transparent by default and then it pigments itself to be visible. Am I on the right track?

Yeah sometime science goes to far when they go around changing nature.

At least read the article and try to understand what's happening before saying stuff like that.

Albino squid.. yeah they should read the article.

We find that term offensive. Please call them non-pigmented squid.

Since when is albino an offensive term?

Since when do you get to decide what we squid find offensive?

I, for one, am glad to have a local squid to help inform on these matters. Always respect squid, people, pigmented or non!

([Obscure reference] Though Non must, of course, become Juffo-Wup or Void)