On the other hand, autophagy induction by rapamycin reduced TDP-43 accumulation, rescued mRNA processing (a key role of the SMN protein), resulted in migration of TDP-43 to its proper nuclear compartment (Caccamo et al., 2009) and significantly improved neuronal survival in ALS models (Barmada et al., 2014). Here, SMN1 is linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.