AKT1 and Hypercholesterolemia: Although recent report showed that palmitic acid induced-autophagy is regulated via protein kinase C-mediated signaling pathway that is independent of mTOR pathways (Tan et al., 2012), other studies have demonstrated that hypercholesterolemia was associated with hyperactive signaling upstream and downstream of both mTOR complexes, including myocardial Akt, S6K1, 4EBP1, S6, and PKC-α, leading to reduced levels of myocardial autophagy (Glazer et al., 2009).