MTOR and liver dysplastic nodule: In recent years, many studies have found that an increase in mTOR activity and a subsequent decrease of autophagy-related molecular activities such as those of PINK1/Parkin and LC3B can be observed in kidneys of DN animal models (Gödel et al., 2011; Xiao et al., 2017; Li et al., 2017), which may be one of the mechanisms leading to kidney damage.