diff --git a/modules/merge-sce/main.nf b/modules/merge-sce/main.nf
index 048c781..4d33444 100644
--- a/modules/merge-sce/main.nf
+++ b/modules/merge-sce/main.nf
@@ -98,9 +98,9 @@ process export_anndata {
         --is_merged \
 
       # move normalized counts to X in AnnData
-      move_counts_anndata.py --anndata_file ${rna_h5ad_file}
+      reformat_anndata.py --anndata_file ${rna_h5ad_file} --hvg_name "merged_highly_variable_genes"
       if [ -f ${feature_h5ad_file} ]; then
-        move_counts_anndata.py --anndata_file ${feature_h5ad_file}
+        reformat_anndata.py --anndata_file ${feature_h5ad_file} --hvg_name "none"
       fi
       """
     stub:
diff --git a/modules/merge-sce/readme.md b/modules/merge-sce/readme.md
index 8b05cb6..df92e98 100644
--- a/modules/merge-sce/readme.md
+++ b/modules/merge-sce/readme.md
@@ -3,12 +3,11 @@
 This workflow creates merged SCE files and associated AnnData files from a project's individual SCE files.
 
 The workflow and scripts are largely ported from the [`scpca-nf` workflow](https://github.com/AlexsLemonade/scpca-nf).
-The [a9dc826 commit](https://github.com/AlexsLemonade/scpca-nf/tree/a9dc826b8576c48ca38c6ca137f9eeced29c3acc) was used as the base for the port.
+The [519f3bd commit](https://github.com/AlexsLemonade/scpca-nf/commit/519f3bdb5f9d2d33bb6829dddd537b67052cc29d) was used as the base for the port.
 
 There have been some small changes, in particular:
 
-- Containers have been updated to use a more recent version of `scpcaTools`, with underlying updates to Bioconductor and Python packages.
 - The workflow is run on a project level, and all SCE files within a project are merged.
   - the assumption in this workflow is that all libraries within a project are to be merged, so there (currently) are no options to specify which specific samples to merge.
-  - The `--include_adt` flag was also removed from the `merge_sces.R` script, replaced by looking directly at the SCE objects
-  - The `sce_to_anndata.R` script now only warns if the requested feature altExp is not found in the SCE file, rather than erroring out.
+- The `--include_adt` flag was also removed from the `merge_sces.R` script, replaced by looking directly at the SCE objects
+- The `sce_to_anndata.R` script now only warns if the requested feature altExp is not found in the SCE file, rather than erroring out.
diff --git a/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/move_counts_anndata.py b/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/move_counts_anndata.py
deleted file mode 100755
index 75e0412..0000000
--- a/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/move_counts_anndata.py
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,55 +0,0 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python3
-
-# This script takes an AnnData object and checks for the `logcounts`
-# in layers. If present, `logcounts` is moved to `X` and `X` (which has the raw counts)
-# is moved to `raw.X`
-
-import argparse
-import os
-import re
-
-import anndata as adata
-
-parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
-parser.add_argument(
-    "-i",
-    "--anndata_file",
-    dest="anndata_file",
-    required=True,
-    help="Path to HDF5 file with processed AnnData object",
-)
-parser.add_argument(
-    "-u",
-    "--uncompressed",
-    dest="compress",
-    action="store_false",
-    help="Output an uncompressed HDF5 file",
-)
-
-args = parser.parse_args()
-
-# compile extension regex
-file_ext = re.compile(r"\.hdf5$|\.h5$|\.h5ad$", re.IGNORECASE)
-
-# check that input file exists, if it does exist, make sure it's an h5 file
-if not os.path.exists(args.anndata_file):
-    raise FileExistsError("`input_anndata` does not exist.")
-elif not file_ext.search(args.anndata_file):
-    raise ValueError(
-        "--input_anndata must end in either .hdf5, .h5, or .h5ad, and contain a processed AnnData object."
-    )
-
-# read in anndata
-object = adata.read_h5ad(args.anndata_file)
-
-# if logcounts is present
-if "logcounts" in object.layers:
-    # move X to raw.X by creating the raw object
-    object.raw = object
-    # move logcounts to X and rename
-    object.X = object.layers["logcounts"]
-    object.uns["X_name"] = "logcounts"
-    del object.layers["logcounts"]
-
-    # export object
-    object.write_h5ad(args.anndata_file, compression="gzip" if args.compress else None)
diff --git a/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/reformat_anndata.py b/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/reformat_anndata.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..f64c113
--- /dev/null
+++ b/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/reformat_anndata.py
@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+"""
+This script takes an AnnData object and checks for the `logcounts` in layers.
+If present, `logcounts` is moved to `X` and `X` (which has the raw counts) is moved to `raw.X`
+
+In addition, any DataFrames in `obsm` are converted to ndarrays, highly variable genes are converted to a `var` column.
+If a `pca_meta_file` is provided, PCA variance statistics and standard creation values are in the format expected by scanpy.
+"""
+
+import argparse
+import os
+import re
+
+import anndata
+import pandas as pd
+
+parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+parser.add_argument(
+    "-i",
+    "--anndata_file",
+    dest="anndata_file",
+    required=True,
+    help="Path to HDF5 file with processed AnnData object",
+)
+parser.add_argument(
+    "--pca_meta_file",
+    dest="pca_meta_file",
+    required=False,
+    help="Path to file with a table of variance explained by each PCA component",
+)
+parser.add_argument(
+    "--pca_not_centered",
+    dest="pca_centered",
+    action="store_false",
+    help="Indicate that the PCA table is not zero-centered",
+)
+parser.add_argument(
+    "--hvg_name",
+    dest="hvg_name",
+    default="highly_variable_genes",
+    help=(
+        "Indicate the name used to store highly variable genes associated with the PCA in the exported AnnData object."
+        "Use the value 'none' if no highly variable genes were used."
+    ),
+)
+parser.add_argument(
+    "-u",
+    "--uncompressed",
+    dest="compress",
+    action="store_false",
+    help="Output an uncompressed HDF5 file",
+)
+
+args = parser.parse_args()
+
+# compile extension regex
+file_ext = re.compile(r"\.(hdf5|h5|h5ad)$", re.IGNORECASE)
+
+# check that input file exists, if it does exist, make sure it's an h5 file
+if not os.path.exists(args.anndata_file):
+    raise FileExistsError("`input_anndata` does not exist.")
+elif not file_ext.search(args.anndata_file):
+    raise ValueError(
+        "input_anndata must end in either .hdf5, .h5, or .h5ad, and contain a processed AnnData adata."
+    )
+
+# if there is a pca_meta_file, check that it exists and has a tsv extension
+if args.pca_meta_file:
+    if not os.path.exists(args.pca_meta_file):
+        raise FileExistsError("`pca_meta_file` does not exist.")
+    elif not args.pca_meta_file.casefold().endswith(".tsv"):
+        raise ValueError("`pca_meta_file` must end in .tsv.")
+
+# read in anndata
+adata = anndata.read_h5ad(args.anndata_file)
+
+# if logcounts is present
+if "logcounts" in adata.layers:
+    # move X to raw.X by creating the raw adata
+    adata.raw = adata
+    # move logcounts to X and rename
+    adata.X = adata.layers["logcounts"]
+    adata.uns["X_name"] = "logcounts"
+    del adata.layers["logcounts"]
+
+# convert DataFrames in obsm to ndarrays
+for key, value in adata.obsm.items():
+    if isinstance(value, pd.DataFrame):
+        adata.obsm[key] = value.to_numpy()
+
+# convert highly variable genes to a column if given
+use_hvg = args.hvg_name.casefold() != "none"
+if use_hvg:
+    if args.hvg_name not in adata.uns.keys():
+        raise ValueError("`hvg_name` must be present in the `uns` data for the object")
+    adata.var["highly_variable"] = adata.var.gene_ids.isin(adata.uns[args.hvg_name])
+
+
+# add pca adata to uns if pca_meta_file is provided in the format created by scanpy
+if args.pca_meta_file:
+    pca_meta = pd.read_csv(args.pca_meta_file, sep="\t", index_col=0)
+    if "variance" not in pca_meta.columns or "variance_ratio" not in pca_meta.columns:
+        raise ValueError(
+            "`pca_meta_file` must contain columns `variance` and `variance_ratio`"
+        )
+    pca_object = {
+        "param": {
+            "zero_center": args.pca_centered,
+            "use_highly_variable": use_hvg,
+            "mask_var": ("highly_variable" if use_hvg else None),
+        },
+        "variance": pca_meta["variance"].to_numpy(),
+        "variance_ratio": pca_meta["variance_ratio"].to_numpy(),
+    }
+    adata.uns["pca"] = pca_object
+
+# export adata
+adata.write_h5ad(args.anndata_file, compression="gzip" if args.compress else None)
diff --git a/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/sce_to_anndata.R b/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/sce_to_anndata.R
index a3f672e..de2b988 100755
--- a/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/sce_to_anndata.R
+++ b/modules/merge-sce/resources/usr/bin/sce_to_anndata.R
@@ -23,6 +23,12 @@ option_list <- list(
     type = "character",
     help = "path to output hdf5 file to store RNA counts as AnnData object. Must end in .hdf5, .h5ad, or .h5"
   ),
+  make_option(
+    opt_str = c("--output_pca_tsv"),
+    default = NULL,
+    type = "character",
+    help = "path to output a table of variance explained by each principal component. Must end in .tsv"
+  ),
   make_option(
     opt_str = c("--feature_name"),
     type = "character",
@@ -62,12 +68,17 @@ if (!(stringr::str_ends(opt$output_rna_h5, ".hdf5|.h5|.h5ad"))) {
   stop("output rna file name must end in .hdf5, .h5, or .h5ad")
 }
 
+# check that the pca file is a tsv
+if (!is.null(opt$output_pca_tsv) && !stringr::str_ends(opt$output_pca_tsv, ".tsv")) {
+  stop("output pca file name must end in .tsv")
+}
+
 # Merged object function  ------------------------------------------------------
 
 # this function updates merged object formatting for anndata export
 format_merged_sce <- function(sce) {
   # paste X to any present reduced dim names
-  reducedDimNames(sce) <- glue::glue("X_{reducedDimNames(sce)}")
+  reducedDimNames(sce) <- glue::glue("X_{tolower(reducedDimNames(sce))}")
   return(sce)
 }
 
@@ -120,8 +131,8 @@ format_czi <- function(sce) {
   # so everything gets set to false
   rowData(sce)$feature_is_filtered <- FALSE
 
-  # paste X to any present reduced dim names
-  reducedDimNames(sce) <- glue::glue("X_{reducedDimNames(sce)}")
+  # paste X to any present reduced dim names, converting to lower case
+  reducedDimNames(sce) <- glue::glue("X_{tolower(reducedDimNames(sce))}")
 
   return(sce)
 }
@@ -161,6 +172,18 @@ scpcaTools::sce_to_anndata(
   compression = ifelse(opt$compress_output, "gzip", "none")
 )
 
+# Get PCA metadata for AnnData
+if (!is.null(opt$output_pca_tsv) && "X_pca" %in% reducedDimNames(sce)) {
+  pca_meta_df <- data.frame(
+    PC = 1:ncol(reducedDims(sce)$X_pca),
+    variance = attr(reducedDims(sce)$X_pca, "varExplained"),
+    variance_ratio = attr(reducedDims(sce)$X_pca, "percentVar") / 100
+  )
+
+  # write pca to tsv
+  readr::write_tsv(pca_meta_df, opt$output_pca_tsv)
+}
+
 message("Exported RNA")
 
 # AltExp to AnnData -----------------------------------------------------------