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Diabetic nephropathy (DN), a severe microvascular complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), results in high mortality due to the lack of effective interventions. The current study investigated the preventive effect of krill oil (KO) on DN using a type 2 DM mouse model induced by streptozotocin and high-fat diet for 24 weeks. The diabetic mice developed albuminuria, mesangial matrix accumulation, glomerular hypertrophy, and fibrosis formation, with an increase in renal proinflammatory, oxidative and profibrotic gene expression. KO significantly prevented these effects but did not improve hyperglycemia and glucose intolerance. In high-glucose-treated mesangial cells (MCs), KO preferably modulated TGF-β1 signaling as revealed by RNA-sequencing. In TGF-β1-treated MCs, KO abolished SMAD2/3 phosphorylation and nuclear translocation and activated

Three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured conducting polymer hydrogels represent a group of high-performance electrochemical energy-storage materials. Here, we demonstrate a molecular self-assembly approach toward controlled synthesis of nanostructured polypyrrole (PPy) conducting hydrogels, which was "cross-linked" by a conjugated dopant molecule trypan blue (TB) to form a 3D network with controlled morphology. The protonated TB by ion bonding aligns the free sulfonic acid groups into a certain spatial structure. The sulfonic acid group and the PPy chain are arranged by a self-sorting mechanism to form a PPy nanofiber structure by electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonding. It is found that PPy hydrogels doped with varying dopant concentrations and changing dopant molecules exhibited controllable morphology and tunable electrochemical properties. In addition, the conjugated TB dopants promoted interchain charge transport, resulting in higher electrical conductivity (3.3 S/cm) and pseudocapacitance for the TB-doped PPy, compared with PPy synthesized without TB. When used as supercapacitor electrodes, the TB-doped PPy hydrogel reaches maximal specific capacitance of 649 F/g at the current density 1 A/g. The result shows that PPy nanostructured hydrogels can be tuned for potential applications in next-generation energy-storage materials.