Inflammation, key cytokines (such as TGF-β, Wnt, etc.), the extracellular matrix, autophagy, apoptosis, and epigenetic modifications have all been found to be associated with renal fibrosis (Lv et al., 2018; Morgado-Pascual et al., 2018; Zhao et al., 2019). The gene discussed is TGFB1; the disease is renal fibrosis.