Similar differences were observed between non tumoral MCF-10A cells and MCF-7 BC cells since we showed a significant decrease of GABARAP and GABARAPL2 expression in MCF-7 cells but the highest decrease was observed for GABARAPL1. Based on previous data reporting an epigenetic regulation of BECN-1 in BC and our data showing a deregulation of DNA methylation in our BC samples (Fig. 2a, and Additional file 1: Figure S1), we hypothesized that the loss of GABARAPL1 expression in BC might be linked to epigenetic modifications. This evidence concerns the gene BECN1 and breast cancer.