Podocyte autophagy and injury were observed in kidney biopsies of DKD patients with massive proteinuria, and further experiments in autophagy-related 5 (atg5) knockout mice proved the causal relationship between massive proteinuria and podocyte injury caused by insufficient autophagy (Yasuda-Yamahara et al., 2015). The gene discussed is ATG5; the disease is diabetic kidney disease.