In rats, varicocele testes cells showed increased expression of autophagy marker Beclin 1 and microtubule associated protein 1 light chain 3α (LC3) II/LC3I (Zhu et al., 2017); Exposure of GC-2 cells to hypoxia conditions reduced P62 protein expression and increased the expression of LC3 II and Beclin-1 (Yin et al., 2018b; Zhou et al., 2018). Here, BECN1 is linked to varicocele.