Furthermore, a small population of aberrant basaloid cells, expressing some, but not all, canonical basal cell markers (KRT5-/KRT17+) was recently identified in peripheral lung tissue of IPF patients (Adams et al., 2020; Habermann et al., 2020) The role and function of these cells in IPF pathogenesis remains, however, largely unknown. The gene discussed is KRT17; the disease is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.