CTCF and systemic sclerosis: However, given that DMPs were found to enrich in CTCF binding motifs, which may be a consequence of aberrant upregulation of the CTCF gene in SSc CD4+ T cells, and the importance of CTCF in enabling chromatin loop formation [89], it is therefore possible that aberrant DNA methylation deregulates CTCF recruitment, which has been previously described to be DNA methylation-dependent [90], in turn affecting long-range interactions with distant genes to alter their expression.