Using human datasets of renal transcriptomic data available on the Nephroseq repository (Fig. 1A-C), [25–27] we assessed the expression of Cx43 in healthy (n = 5) and diseased (n = 48) kidneys (IgA nephropathy, membranous nephropathy, lupus nephritis, minimal change nephrotic syndrome, membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis, amyloidosis, antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody-related glomerulonephropathy, diabetic nephropathy and other nephropathies) as encoded by GJA1 gene expression (Fig. 1a) and correlated this to parameters of renal function (Fig. 1b, c). Here, GJA1 is linked to lipoid nephrosis.