<p>You probably have red blood cell contamination.  It's probably better to identify which cells they are.  They'll probably cluster away from the cells you are interested in.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-06-25T18:40:18.930Z
2020-06-25T18:40:18.930Z
swbarnes2
<p>They may be B cells, did you analysis if they have b cell marker?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-06-16T19:14:55.767Z
2021-06-16T19:14:55.767Z
31 Yli
<p>In one scRNA-seq sample I encountered the genes: Hbb-bs, Hba-a1 and Hba-a2. These genes appear on top of the list of the highest expressed genes but the 75% percentile of cells have very low counts. Therefore the expression is highly skewed.</p>
<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/D6ptW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/D6ptW.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>
<p>Reading from <a href="https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=HBB&amp;keywords=hbb-bs" rel="nofollow noreferrer">gene cards</a>, they appear to be coding hemoglobin subunits and involved in oxygen transport. I think they may need to be removed before normalization, also because the analysis I'm running does not consider oxygen transport.</p>
<p>Has anyone encountered this situation and what do I do?</p>

<gene><scrnaseq>
Hemoglobin subunits genes in scRNA-seq
# Hemoglobin subunits genes in scRNA-seq

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-08-06)

In one scRNA-seq sample I encountered the genes: Hbb-bs, Hba-a1 and Hba-a2. These genes appear on top of the list of the highest expressed genes but the 75% percentile of cells have very low counts. Therefore the expression is highly skewed.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/D6ptW.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/D6ptW.png)

Reading from [gene cards](https://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=HBB&keywords=hbb-bs), they appear to be coding hemoglobin subunits and involved in oxygen transport. I think they may need to be removed before normalization, also because the analysis I'm running does not consider oxygen transport.

Has anyone encountered this situation and what do I do?

**Tags:** gene, scrnaseq

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-06-25. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

You probably have red blood cell contamination. It's probably better to identify which cells they are. They'll probably cluster away from the cells you are interested in.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2021-06-16. Score: 0

They may be B cells, did you analysis if they have b cell marker?


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