ATG5 and infection: Vallejo et al. (2014) showed that in Lagovirus europaeus/GI.1 infection there is increased expression of phospho-mTOR in the liver at 12, 18, and 24 h p.i., which unexpectedly correlated with the simultaneous development of autophagy. These results indicated that mTOR was not a negative regulator of autophagic flux. Given that our study achieved down-regulation of autophagy genes (Beclin-1, Atg5, Atg12, Atg16L, and MAP1LC3B) in blood cells during the initial phase of infection, further work will be required to determine the involvement of mTOR signaling in this phenomenon.