Basal epithelial cells located beneath the luminal cells and occupying the basal layer of the airway epithelium. Function as precursor cells that give rise to other epithelial cell types during tissue maintenance and regeneration.
These are termed "resting" because there are distinct subpopulations defined by their functional roles and expression of specific molecular markers.
Basal resting cells express canonical basal cell markers (KRT5 and TP63), but not proliferation markers (MKi67), or repair (KRT14) markers which can be found in basal cells.
