Kim et al. (2016) demonstrated that miRNA-27a and miRNA-27b plays a crucial role in the regulation of autophagy for clearing damaged mitochondria via PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1) gene. Similarly, Cheng et al. (2016) demonstrated that miRNA-181a sensitizes neuroblastoma cells to apoptosis by suppressing Parkin-mediated mitophagy. miRNA-299-5p plays a crucial role in AD pathogenesis by regulating apoptosis through autophagy in N2a and SH-SY5Y cells and a mouse model of the AD (Zhang et al., 2016). The gene discussed is PRKN; the disease is Alzheimer disease.