HongLab

@TakeshiImaiLab @gabriel_a_d_ @naturemethods @Shigenori774 And if you care, check out these crazy values of real products — these are the osmolarities mucosal cells can be bathed in for hours! drjengunter.com/lube-osmolalit…

@gabriel_a_d_ @naturemethods @Shigenori774 Cheeto dust solution is extremely hypertonic. Mammalian cells can never survive long enough for live imaging. See Extended Data Fig. 3.

Our live tissue clearing paper is out in @naturemethods! We achieved optical clearing of mammalian brain tissues without compromising normal neuronal function. Big congrats to @Shigenori774 and our wonderful collaborators! 🎉 nature.com/articles/s4159… (1/10)

If extreme osmolarity instantly killed mammalian cells, sushi restaurants would be biomedical hazard sites. Soy sauce can reach ~7000 mOsm (~18–20% NaCl). Yet oral epithelial cells (these are non-keratinized live cells) are bathed in extremely hypertonic solutions during eating, even with saliva dilution. I don’t think generalizing the stringent requirements for the brain (kudos for your work!) to other parts of the body (as demonstrated in our and many others’ tartrazine works) is a good idea. At least these cells are no less healthy than me enjoying brined olives over a 30-min meal!

I am humbled and grateful to receive the Sloan Fellowship in Physics -- although not a physicist by training, I seem to have been entangled long enough. I’m deeply grateful to my mentors, research group, colleagues and collaborators, and department chair for supporting my nomination. Thank you! #SloanFellow

@SergeyStavisky @StanfordMSE Thank you Sergey!

@StanfordMSE @HongNeuroTech Congratulations Guosong!!

Congratulations to Prof. Guosong Hong (@HongNeuroTech), who was awarded the ETH Materials Research Prize for Young Investigators! Your hard work and dedication to is truly commendable. Read more: tinyurl.com/4zpj3w7v

@asalleo Thank you so much, Alberto, for your support!!

Congratulations @HongNeuroTech for this great recognition of the group’s research!

We’re excited to share our latest Nature Protocols paper, which presents a detailed protocol for achieving optical transparency in live mice using tartrazine: nature.com/articles/s4159…. We're also thrilled to see several recent papers from other labs highlighting the power of tartrazine! opg.optica.org/optica/fulltex… opg.optica.org/ol/fulltext.cf… spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/journ… arxiv.org/abs/2503.05105 biorxiv.org/content/10.110… biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@asalleo @BrongersmaMark Thank you so much, Alberto!!

Congratulations @BrongersmaMark and @HongNeuroTech for this incredible result, making skin transparent!🤯

I apologize if our previous preprint post was taken as if the original results were irreproducible. The skin clearing was reproduced. Although other issues remain, we decided to retract our preprint. I apologize to @HongNeuroTech and the community for the confusion.

@TakeshiImaiLab ...and please note the in vivo skin transparency is transient and can be reversed (Fig. S3, S6, S8 & S9), which is different from prolonged soaking of other types of cultured cells in a solution (in your preprint).

@HongNeuroTech Thanks! We have confirmed that we performed the experiments as described in your protocol. A more aggressive mechanical treatment (3.3) might break the skin barrier, but any tissue soaked in 0.6 M tartrazine cannot be *live biological tissue*. You may need to clarify this point.

Check out our new bioRxiv preprint that challenges the recent in vivo optical clearing paper with tartrazine dye in Science. To be clear, they only demonstrated optical clearing of *dead cells*. Tartrazine cannot make live tissues transparent doi.org/10.1101/2024.0…

@TakeshiImaiLab We did have this in the paper: "For thicker and less permeable skin, a microneedle applicator or an insulin syringe with a 30G needle (fig. S7) was used to deliver the solution of absorbing molecules without agarose."

@TakeshiImaiLab 3. Skin transparency was reversed by rinsing and massaging the skin with water (Fig. S3, S6, S8 & S9). This transient exposure differs from prolonged soaking of cells in a solution and can be tolerated (Fig. 36).

2. Dye molecules need to cross the skin barrier to be fully absorbed: "After the abdominal tissue has sufficiently absorbed the dye molecules, a clear lubricating eye gel was applied"; "For thicker and less permeable skin, a microneedle applicator or an insulin syringe with a 30G needle (fig. S7) was used to deliver the solution of absorbing molecules without agarose."

We would like to share this detailed protocol based on our recent Science paper to help any interested team in achieving optical transparency in live mice with tartrazine: docs.google.com/document/d/1Da…

@StanfordMSE Many thanks to my supportive department for having my back all the time!!

Congratulations to Professor Guosong Hong (@HongNeuroTech) for being selected as one of the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars for 2024! tinyurl.com/3bhrm84a

@whl0903 @StanfordMSE Thank you so much Evan!

@StanfordMSE @HongNeuroTech Congratulations @HongNeuroTech !

@asalleo Thank you so much Alberto and big thanks to our incredibly collegial department for all the support in my career!

Congratulations @HongNeuroTech on this very well-deserved achievement!