TERT and pulmonary fibrosis: systematically TERT knock-out does not induce spontaneous pulmonary fibrosis in mice, but can increase susceptibility to bleomycin (Degryse et al., 2012), while mesenchymal-specific TERT knock-out can alleviate bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis (Liu et al., 2015); and AEC II-specific TERT defect reduces AEC II proliferation and induces AEC II cell senescence (Liu T. et al., 2019).