TFRC and infection: Indeed it has been suggested that defects in erythroblast maturation during infection may stem from transferrin receptor expression shifting from Ter119+ cells to non-erythroid cells (Chang and Stevenson, 2004), which would in turn affect the ability of erythroblasts to take up iron and thus synthesize the hemoglobin required for erythroblast maturation, however, this was not measured in our study.