SMAD3 and liver dysplastic nodule: Lysosomal exhaustion leads to dysfunctional autophagy in kidney tubular epithelial cells, and SMAD3, a key effector of TGFB-SMAD signaling, causes tubular epithelial damage in diabetic organisms by disrupting the autophagic flow, which in turn accelerates the DN process (Yang et al., 2021).