Although the phenotypes of mice harboring brain-specific deletion of Atg5 or Atg7 reveal the critical role of autophagy in the removal of aggregated proteins7,8, Friedman et al. 9 demonstrated that DA neuron-specific autophagy deficiency leads to the restrictive presynaptic accumulation of synuclein in the dorsal striatum, suggesting that impaired autophagy plays a role in PD pathogenesis. The gene discussed is ATG7; the disease is Parkinson disease.