Immediately after euthanizing animals, eyes were enucleated. A scalpel blade was then used to make a small incision into the anterior chamber near the equator and then both eyes from individual animals were immersed in 5 ml fixative (2% (w/v) paraformaldehyde and 2% glutaraldehyde (v/v) in 0.1 M sodium cacodylate buffer, pH 7.2). Eyes were fixed for at least 24 hr at room temperature (RT) prior to dissection of the lenses. At this time, equatorial and axial dimensions of lenses and gross lenticular appearance were recorded. Statistical analyses on data consisted of Student's t-test, means and standard deviation, using the statistical software package StatMost (Dataxiom Software Inc., Los Angeles, CA).