Fig. 1.

Eye lens-specific aPKCλ knockout causes microphthalmia (small eyes) and cataract formation. The eyes in a 2-month-old aPKCλ cko mouse (B) have a sunken, almond-like shape compared with the protruding, round eyes in a similarly aged control animal (A). Once removed, the eyeballs of aPKCλ cko (D) were smaller than controls (C) and had small opaque pupils with brown/black patches (E, an eight times enlarged view of D). In contrast to the large transparent control lenses (F, upper four lenses), aPKCλ cko lenses (F, lower four lenses) were small and had opaque lens nuclei, i.e., nuclear cataract. The HE stain section of an aPKCλ cko lens from a 4-month-old mouse shows disorganised fibre cell layers with abnormal spaces (H, arrows). This contrasts the more homogenous fibre mass of the section of a similarly aged, control lens (G). Scale bars: 1 mm for (C), (D), and (F) and 500 μm for (G) and (H).