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.
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