Enrichment of mitochondrial and ribosomal pathways - an artifact?

[Zig-E-Stardust]

Hey everyone,
In the last couple of years I’ve analyzed several different scRNA-seq of epithelial, and in most of these I found that one of the two groups of each experiment (different conditions each time) had enrichment of mitochondrial and ribosomal pathways (note: the mitochondrial pathways I’m talking about are based on nuclear-encoded genes).

I wonder: generally speaking, are the chances of enrichment of mitochondrial/ribosomal pathways being an artifact higher than those of other types of pathways? If so, do you have any advice on how to deal with that?

Cheers,
Omer