Scientists create glowing green mice

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In Vivo Tumour Models (0.06 MB)   Whole Body Optical Imaging... (0.22 MB)   Whole Body Optical Imaging (0.65 MB)   In Vivo Gene Expression Models (0.11 MB)   Leica MZ6   PNAS Online

The team used whole-body imaging to track melanoma cells (that they injected into the mice's tails) when the cells spawned growths in the brain, liver and bone. Similarly, Yang and colleagues followed a colon tumour as it spread to the liver and skeleton. There is some evidence that cells could be labelled in the same way inside an animal's body. With a Leica MZ12 fluorescence stereomicroscope hooked up to a special type of camera tumours of 60 micrometers (millionths of a meter) across can be spotted half a millimeter under the skin. Bigger growths of around 1800 micrometers are visible at 2.2 millimeters' depth, as long as the cells making up the growths are tagged with very strong GFP fluorescence.