Liu et al. (2019a) found that the mTOR pathway is involved in the regulation of mitophagy in I/R and H/R-mediated ALI, modulating cell apoptosis. Inhibition of mTOR can induce mitophagy, enhance cell apoptosis, and exacerbate lung injury. On the other hand, Zhong et al. (2023) found that mTOR is also associated with mitophagy in LPS-induced ALI, but their results are inconsistent with those of Liu et al. (2019a) as they showed that inhibition of mTOR also suppresses mitophagy (Zhong et al., 2023). The gene discussed is MTOR; the disease is acute respiratory distress syndrome.