Is there a way to distinguish doublets from phagocytes performing efferocytosis in scRNA-seq data?

Question

[m.zarodniuk]

Hello everyone!

Here is an interesting conundrum. It has been reported that phagocytes may contain so-called “passenger” transcripts that originate from engulfed apoptotic cells, which not only obscures the transcriptional profile of a true phagocyte but also in certain cases may result in a combination of two distinct transcriptional profiles reminiscent of a neotypic doublet/multiplet. My question is how could one possibly distinguish such two types of events, given that the end result is the same – a mixture of two gene expression profiles?