Since genome-wide association studies have implicated that autophagy related 16-like 1 (ATG16L1) gene polymorphisms are associated with risk of inflammatory bowel disease [40, 41], previous researchers have established autophagy-deficiency in an intestinal epithelial cell model using Villin-Cre mice [19, 42–44]. The gene discussed is ATG16L1; the disease is inflammatory bowel disease.