Recent studies using a high-resolution scRNA-seq analysis reported that a transcriptionally distinct KRT17+ population accumulates aberrantly in a non-permissive pathologic environment, such as with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) (Adams et al., 2019; Habermann et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2020). This evidence concerns the gene KRT17 and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.