Dye in Doritos was used in an experiment that created transparent mice like a “magic trick”

Doritos are a popular snack for many. Now scientists have discovered that one of the ingredients in the triangular, delicious tortilla chips has a superpower: it can make the skin of mice transparent.

In the Sept. 6 issue of the journal Science, researchers at Stanford University describe in detail how they were able to see through the skin of living mice by applying a mixture of water and tartrazine. Tartrazine is a bright yellow-orange food dye used in Doritos and other foods, medicines and cosmetics.

The experiments arose from a search for better ways to see tissues and organs in the body. The researchers chose tartrazine because the dye's molecules absorb blue and ultraviolet light, allowing the light to pass more easily through the mouse's skin.

“For those who understand the basic physics behind it, it makes sense; but if you're not familiar with it, it looks like a magic trick,” said Zihao Ou, the study's lead author who is now an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Dallas, in a description of the research on the university's website.

Is there a cancer risk from mobile phones?: According to the report, this is unlikely.

The Doritos effect: snack ingredient creates invisible mouse

After testing the dye on tissue samples from mice and raw chicken breast, the researchers rubbed the mice's skulls and abdomens with the dye-water solution. When the dye was absorbed, within minutes they were able to “see the skin, muscles and connective tissues in living rodents through,” the researchers write in the journal article.

Once researchers wash off the dye, the mice lose their transparency and the dye is excreted in urine, according to the study description on the university's website. “It's important that the dye is biocompatible – it's safe for living organisms,” Ou said. “It's also very inexpensive and efficient; we don't need a lot of it for it to work.”

Before you start smearing yourself with Doritos—the dye is used in several Doritos flavors, including Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch and Flaming Hot Nacho—tartrazine doesn't necessarily give people a Harry Potter-style cloak of invisibility.

That's because human skin is about 10 times thicker than that of a mouse, and it's not certain how much dye – or how it would need to be administered – would be needed to make it work in humans, Ou said.

The researchers plan to investigate this further and experiment with other substances that might outperform tartrazine.

“Optical devices such as microscopes are not directly used to study living humans or animals because light cannot penetrate living tissue,” Ou said. “But now that we can make tissue transparent, we can study the dynamics in more detail. This will completely revolutionize existing optical research in biology.”

In an accompanying editorial in the journal, biophotonics researcher Christopher Rowlands and experimental optical physicist Jon Gorecki, both at Imperial College London, compare the results with HG Wells' 1897 novel The Invisible Man.

In combination with other techniques, the development of tartrazine “could enable deeper imaging than either method alone would be possible,” they wrote.

Follow Mike Snider on X and Threads: @mikesnider and Subscribe.

What is everyone talking about? Subscribe to our trend newsletter to receive the latest news of the day

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Researchers use Doritos dye to see through mice's skin