A recent study revealed that Drp1, which initiates mitophagy following mitochondrial fragmentation and lysosomal degradation of mitochondria (Fonseca et al., 2019), is profoundly reduced in T cells from SLE patients and lupus-prone mice, concomitant with the accumulation of mitochondria (Caza et al., 2014). Here, DNM1L is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.