ATG7 and neurodegenerative disease: While there are a variety of hypotheses for the role of autophagy in neurodegenerative diseases [66]–[68], the most compelling evidence that a primary defect in autophagy can induce neurodegenerative disease was generated by two studies in which neuron specific dysfunction of two proteins involved in the formation of autophagasomes, Atg5 and Atg7, was induced in mice [65], [69].