The importance of autophagy in the initiation and/or progression of KRAS- or BRAF-driven lung cancer was revealed through analysis of GEM models in which deletion of key autophagy genes (Atg5 or Atg7) accompanied the initiation of oncoprotein expression (Guo et al., 2013; Bhatt et al., 2019; Khayati et al., 2020; Poillet-Perez et al., 2018; Rao et al., 2014). The gene discussed is ATG5; the disease is lung cancer.