Excessive mitochondrial stress (Ethell & Fei, 2009) or modifications of proteins involved in the mitophagy modulation (e.g. parkin and PINK1) (Narendra et al., 2010; Van Humbeeck et al., 2011; Palikaras & Tavernarakis, 2012) disturb mitophagy and promote PD. The gene discussed is PINK1; the disease is Parkinson disease.