Intriguingly, NEDD4L downregulates autophagy through inducing ubiquitinated degradation of ULK1, while, differing from FBXW7-induced autophagy, NEDD4L-mediated autophagy promotes tumor proliferation (Lee et al., 2020b), which reflects the “contradictory effect” of autophagy on cell death or growth distinguished from contexts and stages of cancer (Li et al., 2020b). The gene discussed is NEDD4L; the disease is cancer.