Harnessing Genomic Analysis to Explore the Role of Telomeres in the Pathogenesis and Progression of Diabetic Kidney Disease

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Hill et al submit a review article entitled "Harnessing genomic analysis to explore the role of telomeres in the pathogenesis and progression of diabetic kidney disease". In this very interesting and well crafted review, they summarize studies involving genomic, epigenomic and functional prediction tools to uncover novel genes and pathways associated with  CKD and DKD. They discuss more closely the association between telomere length and epigentics in the  DKD context. 

Suggestions:

The authors discuss the roles of gene methylation in epigenetics. They could acknowledge that others molecular actors such as non-coding RNAs are alsoimplicated in epigenetics in the kidney context (see for example PMID: 34199920). In this light, one could speculate that EVs, that are known to be rich in RNAs, coud have non coding RNAs modulating TERT mRNA action.

Also, the authors claim that methylation changes could be useful for the identification of therapeutic targets. It would be interesting if they could speculate on the therapeutic tools that could be used to develop new drugs in this clinical context (CRIPSR or other), and possible delivery methods.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

We have quoted the reviewers comments in black and our response in blue. Changes in the text are highlighted in yellow.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is well organized and and includes valuable data, which are able to contribute this field of science.

 

Regards

Author Response

We thank this Reviewer for their positive response and value their helpful review of this manuscript.