... of apoptosis. The αA-crystallin (Cryaa) promoter has been shown to bind and to be activated by Pax6 in vitro(Cvekl et al., 1995 ; Yang and Cvekl, 2005 ; Yang et al., 2006). Accordingly, Pax6 was found to be required in vivo for the onset of Cryaa expression during early stages of lens development...

... increases in lens reflectance. Histological analysis revealed retention of lens fiber cell nuclei owing to impeded terminal differentiation. Proteomics identified γ-crystallin as a protein that was substantially diminished in cloche mutants. Crystallins are the major structural proteins in mouse, human...

...Jorge Blanco; Franck Girard; Yusuke Kamachi; Hisato Kondoh; Walter J. Gehring Functional conservation of enhancers among evolutionarily diverged organisms is a powerful way to identify basic regulatory circuits and key developmental regulators. This is especially applicable to Crystallin genes...

... of differentiation. Xenopus tropicalis was used to make GFP reporter lines with γ1-crystallin promoter elements directing GFP expression within the early lens. X. tropicalis is a close relative of X. laevis that shares the same ease of tissue manipulation with the added benefits of a diploid genome and faster life...

... that pax6 induces Xlens1 expression, but unlike pax6, Xlens1 cannot induce the expression of the lens differentiation marker β-crystallin . In the whole embryo, overexpression of Xlens1 in the lens ectoderm causes it to thicken and maintain gene expression characteristics of the PLE. Also...