A number of studies have examined the effects of UV (particularly UVB) irradiation on lupus and normal T cells, and showed that UV exposure can induce DNA hypomethylation and the upregulation of selected T cell genes implicated in lupus, including LFA-1 (CD11a) (Richardson et al., 1994; Zhu et al., 2013). Here, ITGAL is linked to systemic lupus erythematosus.