How to identify latent variables in single-cell RNA-Seq data
I think to identify latent variables, PCA is probably not going to work. NMF might be worth trying. You might want to check out a method called consensus NMF (cNMF) (https://elifesciences.org/articles/43803) published in eLife. The author described some latent variables corresponds to cell types, while others corresponds to cell-cycle or metabolic states of cells.