In our work, we explored five clusters of CAF subpopulations that presented potential interactions with important microbes, in which clusters 7 and 10 were found to be responsible for ECM formation, similar to another study reporting that microbiota inside CRC was co-localized with CAFs, activated the TLR2/NF-κB pathway in the CRC microenvironment (Xu et al., 2022). This evidence concerns the gene NFKB1 and colorectal carcinoma.