Fig. 3.
Cataracts in Ercc2Rco015 mutant mice. a Lenses of 5-week-old wild types, hetero- and homozygous RCO015 mutants are prepared and photographed. The lenses of wild types are completely clear; the lenses of heterozygous mutants demonstrate opacities at the capsule, and in the homozygous mutants clear boundaries in the cortical areas are observed in addition to the nuclear opacity. The lenses of homozygous mutants are smaller (bar: 500 µm). b The lens thickness was determined using the established optical low coherence interferometry technique (Puk et al. 2006). It turned out that the lenses of the homozygous Ercc2 mutants (both males and females at the age of 25 weeks) are more than 20% smaller (p < 0.001) than the lenses of heterozygous mutants or wild-type littermates. The quantitative data of the lens thickness are given in a box-and-whisker plot; the whiskers give the 1st and 3rd quartiles, and the bar in the middle of the box indicates the median of the axial length. (Oana Amarie, unpublished data of the German Mouse Clinic, GMC). c Scheimpflug imaging of the same lenses as shown in a demonstrates the clear lenses in wild types and heterozygotes; the opacity in the nuclear region of homozygous mutants is clearly visible above the slightly opaque background of the entire lens (bar: 1000 µm). d The quantitative data of the lens density of the Scheimpflug images are given in a box-and-whisker plot; the whiskers give the 1st and 3rd quartiles, and the bar in the middle of the box indicates the median of the lens density (from Kunze et al. 2015, with permission from the authors)