The study was led jointly by Professor Ganesh Pathare, from the Department of Infectious Diseases and Public Health of the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences at CityUHK, and Professor Johannes Loffing, from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. The team used single‑cell RNA sequencing to show that Klotho is unevenly distributed across the nephron segment called the distal convolution (DC), with its expression markedly enriched in the late DC compared to the early DC. This discovery guided the generation of a suite of targeted mouse models that selectively deleted Klotho in specific nephron segments, allowing the team to trace the renal origins of soluble Klotho (sKlotho), the secreted form of the protein.
