Do different cells transcribe different amounts of gene data?

Question

[dominique.c.a.paul]

Obviously different cells transcribe different genes depending on their function. But does the overall number of genes being transcribed in a given period of time strongly differ between different cells? And if so, can the differences be very significant? I was thinking about what effects this would have on how we normalise expression data.

Thanks!

Answer 1

[igor]

Different cells certainly have a different number of total transcripts and that should affect normalization. Unfortunately, there is no good way to assess the differences in total RNA. One solution is to use ERCC spike-ins, but this may introduce more problems than it solves and seems to be less popular recently. 10x Genomics has a page that outlines some of the problems and Vallejos et al wrote a more extended explanation.