BNIP3 and ischemic stroke: As Yuan Y et al. (Yuan et al., 2017) discovered, in ischemia-reperfusion models, knocking out NIX decreased mitochondrial autophagy, exacerbated brain damage, indicating that NIX had neuroprotective effects and suggesting that mitochondrial autophagy mediated by BNIP3/NIX might be a potential therapeutic target for ischemic stroke.