Figure 3

Morphological and ultrastructural analyses of Cav-1^−/− conventional outflow pathway.

(a) Semithin sections (Richardson’s stain) through the iridocorneal angle of representative control (upper left panel) and Cav-1^−/− (upper right panel) eyes. Middle and lower panels in (a) show higher magnifications by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The chamber angle is open in control and Cav-1^−/− eyes while obvious abnormalities of ciliary body (CB), trabecular meshwork (TM), and Schlemm’s canal (SC) are absent. At higher magnification (middle and lower panels), giant vacuoles (GV) are detectable in both genotypes. (b–e) Quantitative ultrastructural analyses of control and Cav-1^−/− eyes. No significant differences in the number of GVs (b) or their sizes (c) were observed. (d) Endothelial nuclei diameter, a measurement of endothelial thickness, was not significantly different between genotypes. (e) The JCT depth was also not significantly different between Cav-1^−/− and control eyes. Eyes from 4 Cav-1^−/− mice and 7 littermate controls were used for these quantitative analyses. Numbers of GVs were quantified in 86 non-overlapping images from Cav-1^−/− eyes and 151 images from controls. Giant vacuole diameter measurements were made on 74 Cav-1^−/− and 107 control GVs. Endothelial cell nuclei diameters were measured from 118 Cav-1^−/− and 155 control nuclei. The depth of the JCT was measured at seven locations in each image for a total of 490 and 735 measurements in Cav-1^−/− and control eyes, respectively. For a schematic on how these measurements were made, see Supplementary Fig. 2.