ABSTRACT
The crystalline lens, with its unusually high protein content and unique arrangement of structural fibers, provides, together with the cornea, the refractive index necessary to focus images on the retina. To achieve this, the lens must be perfectly transparent. Loss of transparency, or cataract, is the most common cause of blindness and visual impairment worldwide. Cataract formation is a multifactorial process, resulting from a wide variety of physical, biochemical, metabolic, and structural changes occurring in both the nuclear and cortical regions of the lens. Cataracts are intimately associated with normal aging processes in the lens, and with advancing age most individuals develop some degree of lens opacification.
