The signaling pathways associated with silicosis include phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase ((Chen et al., 2021), RhoA/Rho kinase (Wei et al., 2019), nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) (Di Giuseppe et al., 2009; Abd Elhameed, 2021), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) (Li et al., 2017), transforming growth factor-beta1/SMAD (Feng et al., 2020), autophagy (Du et al., 2019), and nuclear factor erythroid-related factor2 (Zhu et al., 2020), of which macrophages and their related signaling pathways are widely recognized to play a crucial role in silicosis. The gene discussed is WNK2; the disease is silicosis.