Dysfunction and death of chondrocytes would lead to the failure of articular cartilage.22 Previous studies showed that NR4A3 is involved in promoting apoptosis in lymphoma and cancer cells by acting as downstream of P53.20, 21 Here, our data demonstrated this similar function of NR4A3 in rat chondrocytes (Figure 2 and Figure S3). The gene discussed is TP53; the disease is cancer.