Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing what could possibly make a lot of animal-rights activists happy - a see-through frog.
Frogs have been one of the most popular of animals for dissection purposes, both as part of a school education system, as well as in research institutions. However these procedures have become increasingly controversial, as animal-rights activists agitate for computer-aided simulations to replace the suffering that frogs must go through in order that your children can score an A in biology class.
Professor Masayuki Sumida, lead researcher at the Institute for Amphibian Biology in Hiroshima University, and his team had announced this breakthrough at an academic conference last week. These frogs, which exhibited transparent skin from the tadpole stage, were produced by selectively cross-breeding the offspring of certain specimens of Japanese brown frogs (Rana japonica) which carried certain recessive genes that had caused them to have pale skin. The ultimate benefit of this transparent skin was that the researchers could observe the organs of frogs throughout their entire life without having to dissect the frog to find out the effects of, say, toxins on the organs, or of the growth and development of cancer in particular organs.
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