BECN1 and malignant colon neoplasm: Since there is an unmet need to breed either Apc1638N/+ or ApcMin/+ mice with Beclin-1 or Atg7 knockout mice to definitively assess the impact of autophagy on colon cancer development, for the current study, we investigated the effect of Atg7 or Beclin-1 knockdown on Dclk1 promoter-reporter activity.