Blind attraction: The mechanism of an inherited congenital cataract

摘要

Cataract is the leading cause of blindness in the world, and most cataracts are age-related (1). The proteins in the lens degrade with time, and the subsequent aggregation of the modified proteins produces an increase in light scattering, and hence a loss of vision (2). There are cases, however, in which cataract is an inherited single-gene disorder. Currently, around 60 such cataracts have been identified (3). In these cases, the cause' of the disease is a mutation in the genes that code for the lens proteins.