References and Notes

ings open up a new fi eld of investigation that will need to elucidate both the physiological and biochemical functions that RNA gran-ules control in the lens. Such functions could include the selective translation of mRNAs for structural genes to facilitate the produc-tion of 10 % or more of the vertebrate lens proteome from mRNA produced by a sin-gle-copy gene ( 15), the transport of mRNAs through the dense lens fi ber cell cytoplasm to a site of local translation, and fi ne control of gene expression necessary to set up the refractive index gradient, which corrects for spherical aberration in biological lenses ( 2). These future investigations may provide a new paradigm for the posttranscriptional reg-ulation of gene expression in somatic cells