One cell at a time: HbF distribution in sickle cell disease

Hemoglobinopathies were among the earliest disorders characterized at a molecular level and have long been at the forefront of new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies.In this issue of Blood Advances, Doerfler et al 1 applied single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to address a decades-long question of how 2 clinically important -globin gene locus deletions differentially alter fetal hemoglobin (HbF) production and distribution to produce the phenotypes of sickle hemoglobin (HbS)-hereditary persistence of HbF (HPFH) and HbS-A 0 thalassemia.