Jester James V
The Eye Institute, University of California Irvine, Orange, CA 92868, USA.
Semin Cell Dev Biol. 2008 Apr;19(2):82-93. doi: 10.1016/j.semcdb.2007.09.015. Epub 2007 Oct 2.
Past studies have established that the cornea like the lens abundantly expresses a few water-soluble enzyme/proteins in a taxon specific fashion. Based on these similarities it has been proposed that the lens and the cornea form a structural unit, the 'refracton', that has co-evolved through gene sharing to maximize light transmission and refraction to the retina. Thus far, the analogy between corneal crystallins and lens crystallins has been limited to similarities in the abundant expression, with few reports concerning their structural function. This review covers recent studies that establish a clear relationship between expression of corneal crystallins and light scattering from corneal stromal cells, i.e. keratocytes, that support a structural role for corneal crystallins in the development of transparency similar to that of lens crystallins that would be consistent with the 'refracton' hypothesis.
过去的研究已经证实，角膜与晶状体一样，以分类群特异性的方式大量表达一些水溶性酶/蛋白质。基于这些相似性，有人提出晶状体和角膜形成了一个结构单元，即“屈光子”，它通过基因共享共同进化，以最大限度地提高光线向视网膜的传输和折射。到目前为止，角膜晶状蛋白和晶状体晶状蛋白之间的类比仅限于丰富表达方面的相似性，关于它们结构功能的报道很少。这篇综述涵盖了最近的研究，这些研究明确了角膜晶状蛋白的表达与角膜基质细胞（即角膜细胞）的光散射之间的关系，即角膜晶状蛋白在透明度形成过程中发挥结构作用，类似于晶状体晶状蛋白，这与“屈光子”假说一致。
