Thus, we harvested tissue from 15 and 26 week old KC;DNMAML and age-matched KC mice and extracted mRNA to analyze Hedgehog and Wnt associated gene expression, such as Patched-1 (Ptch1), a Hedgehog pathway component and target gene, and Wnt3a (Wnt3a), a Wnt ligand [5, 8] (Figure 2D). This evidence concerns the gene WNT3A and keratoconus.