Autophagy is a highly conserved self-digestion process, essential to maintain homeostasis and viability in response to nutrient starvation. Although the components of autophagy in the cytoplasm have been well-studied, molecular basis for the epigenetic regulation of autophagy is poorly understood. Here, we identify histone arginine methyltransferase CARM1 as a critical component of autophagy. We found that nutrient starvation increased CARM1 protein level and subsequently histone H3R17 dimethylation. Genome-wide analyses reveal that CARM1 exerts transcriptional coactivator function on autophagy-related genes and lysosomal genes through TFEB. Our findings demonstrate a previously unrecognized role of CARM1-dependent histone arginine methylation as a critical nuclear event of autophagy. Overall design: 1) Gene expression profiling of WT and Carm1 KO MEFs under nutrient rich condition or glucose starvation. 2) Examination of histone H3R17 dimethylation in WT MEFs upon glucose starvation