WITHDRAWN: Tartrazine cannot make live tissues transparent

Withdrawal StatementThe authors have withdrawn their manuscript because one of the conclusions was wrong. The authors sincerely apologize to Ou et al. and the research community for the confusion. In this preprint, the authors performed an abdominal skin clearing experiment following the methods section in Ou et al. (ref. 1) and observed only a marginal clearing effect. In this condition (Figure 1), the authors detected tartrazine only in the stratum corneum (SC) of the skin, where only dead cells are present (Figure 1E, F). However, following a more detailed protocol with additional tips kindly provided by Ou et al. (ref. 1), the abdominal skin became more transparent. It seems that mechanical damage to the SC barrier is critical for successful clearing. In this condition, the authors detected strong tartrazine signals under the SC, including the dermis where live cells are located. We are still concerned about the issue of osmolality and toxicity to live cells; cleared cells must be under hypertonic conditions (Figure 3 and 4). However, since Figure 1 (especially Figure 1E, F) no longer stands, and the title can be misinterpreted as if the original results (ref. 1) were irreproducible, the authors believe it is best to withdraw this preprint. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.