ULK1 and Alzheimer disease: Gene expression studies revealed reduced expression of autophagy- and mitophagy-associated genes in AD patient brains at the mRNA (ATG12, ATG5, BECN1, OPTN, ULK1, AMBRA1, BNIP3, BNIP3L, FUNDC1, VDAC1, VCP) and protein (PINK1, BCL2L13, BNIP3L, p-TBK1, p-ULK1) level (Martín-Maestro et al., 2017; Fang et al., 2019).