Among the major peripheral immune cells in lupus, the autoreactive and pro-inflammatory CD4+ T cells stimulate the differentiation, proliferation and maturation of B cells to enhance the production of autoantibodies, playing a key role in the pathogenesis and progression of SLE (Moulton and Tsokos, 2011; Zhao et al., 2018; Jang et al., 2021). The gene discussed is CD4; the disease is systemic lupus erythematosus.