Depletion of several genes essential for autophagy in various mouse tissues, including Beclin1, Atg5, and Atg7, leads to tissue-specific tumor formation (Liang et al., 1999; Qu et al., 2003, Yue et al., 2003; Ding et al., 2008, Takamura et al., 2011), suggesting that autophagy functions as a tumor suppressor in the early stages of tumorigenesis. The gene discussed is BECN1; the disease is neoplasm.