Using a gain of autophagy procedure, mice with cardiac‐selective Atg7 overexpression (Atg7 transgenic mice) were crossed with CryABR120G mice, a model of desmin‐related cardiomyopathy that exhibits impaired autophagic flux together with the accumulation of preamyloid oligomer (PAO), a toxic component in many of the protein misfolding based neurodegenerative diseases (Maloyan et al., 2007; Pattison et al., 2011). This evidence concerns the gene DES and neurodegenerative disease.