SMAD2 and diabetic kidney disease: Yang et al (2021) reported that Smad3 inhibited TFEB-dependent lysosome biogenesis which leads to autophagy dysregulation in diabetic nephropathy. On the other hand, Shim et al found that depletion of Smad2/3 significantly decreased the protein level of LC3II, whereas non-canonical Smad2/3 signaling is critical to maintain autophagy in trabecular meshwork cells (Shim et al, 2021).