The potential significance of this peculiar pattern of HDAC7-mediated autoimmunity for human disease has recently been brought into sharp focus by two separate studies identifying polymorphisms at the loci of HDAC7 as well as several of its upstream regulatory kinases as independent risk factors in human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and also in primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a destructive autoimmune syndrome of the hepatobiliary system, which is additionally associated with increased IBD risk (Liu et al., 2013; Jostins et al., 2012). The gene discussed is HDAC7; the disease is inflammatory bowel disease.