Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a type of kidney injuries associated with diabetes mellitus and the prevalence of DN has increased dramatically. However, DN still pose problems in therapy, and prognosis. Identifying new DN biomarkers would be helpful in reducing morbidity and mortality from DN and developing novel preventive approaches. In the study, from GSE36336 dataset with DN glomeruli samples, we screened for 238 differentially expressed genes. Enrichment analysis were performed to find out biological function and diseases of DEGs. Next, depended on protein-protein interaction network, We identified top 10 hub genes (Serpine1, Cxcl10, Cfd, Ppbp, Retn, Socs2, Ccr5, Mmp8, Pf4, Cxcl9) may played potential roles in DN. Meanwhile, transcriptome sequencing on podocyte were performed to reconfirm the reliability of Ppbp. To verify the efficiency of the selected genes as biomarkers, several experiments like qRT-PCR, renal histologic analysis and immunofluorescence were conducted to validate. Our results showed that PPBP have the potential to become a novel biomarker for DN podocyte injury.

糖尿病肾病 (DN) 是一种与糖尿病相关的肾损伤，DN 的患病率急剧增加。然而，DN 在治疗和预后方面仍然存在问题。识别新的 DN 生物标志物将有助于降低 DN 的发病率和死亡率并开发新的预防方法。在研究中，我们从具有 DN 肾小球样本的 GSE36336 数据集筛选出 238 个差异表达的基因。进行富集分析以找出DEGs的生物学功能和疾病。接下来，根据蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用网络，我们确定了前 10 个中枢基因（Serpine1、Cxcl10、Cfd、Ppbp、Retn、Socs2、Ccr5、Mmp8、Pf4、Cxcl9）可能在 DN 中发挥潜在作用。同时，对足细胞进行转录组测序以再次确认 Ppbp 的可靠性。为了验证所选基因作为生物标志物的有效性，进行了 qRT-PCR、肾脏组织学分析和免疫荧光等多项实验进行验证。我们的结果表明 PPBP 有可能成为 DN 足细胞损伤的新型生物标志物。