Increased Drp1 expression and mitochondrial fragmentation are early and key events observed in a wide range of neurodegenerative disorders (Hu et al., 2017), including Alzheimer’s (Cho et al., 2009; Manczak et al., 2011; Manczak and Reddy, 2012), Huntington’s (Costa et al., 2010; Song et al., 2011; Shirendeb et al., 2012) and Parkinson’s diseases (Wang et al., 2011). The gene discussed is DNM1L; the disease is Parkinson disease.