Since mutations in mitophagy machinery result in damage to axons in the optic nerve head (Minegishi et al., 2016), and this is the location with the highest amounts of transcellular mitochondrial degradation (Davis et al., 2014), the current study sought to determine whether mutations in OPTN associated with glaucoma might lead to alterations in the non-cell-autonomous degradation of mitochondria. Here, OPTN is linked to glaucoma.