2012); in the above mentioned study, authors investigated deletions within the OPTN coding region in patients affected with ALS and found different types of deletions occurring due to Alu‐mediated recombination (Iida et al. 2012). In this paper, we present evidence that the upstream region of OPTN is also enriched in Alu repeats and prone to nonhomologous recombination events. The gene discussed is OPTN; the disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.