NEK1 and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: TBK1 is a multifunctional serine/threonine protein kinase that plays key roles in various cellular processes through phosphorylating a wide range of substrates, including neuroinflammation, innate immunity, ubiquitin-proteasome systems, cell proliferation, and autophagy pathways involving other genes also associated with ALS, such as SQSTM1/p62, OPTN, and VCP (Oakes et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2018).