To this purpose, with the advanced technology of single-cell RNA-seq, Adams and collaborators identified a new population of IPF lung epithelial cells that was transcriptionally distinct from any epithelial cell type previously described in the lung, named aberrant basaloid cells, characterized by senescence-related genes including CDKN1A, CDKN2A, CCND1, CCND2, MDM2, and GDF15 (Adams et al., 2019). Here, CDKN1A is linked to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.