The phrase "altering a single" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing changes made to one specific item or element within a larger context.
Example: "Altering a single variable in the experiment led to significantly different results."
Alternatives: "modifying one" or "changing a single".
Researchers working with the now famous worm C. elegans (two of the last five Nobel Prizes in medicine went to scientists doing work on the little nematode) were able to produce worms that live more than twice as long and age more slowly by altering a single gene.
In identifying leverage points, however, we do not suggest that altering a single factor (e.g., lecture notes) will result in wholesale transformations to faculty practice.
In addition, the equilibrium is defined in terms of link stability: no players benefit from altering a single link in their link decisions.
Geneticist Thomas Johnson, now at the University of Colorado, showed that altering a single gene, called age-1, doubled the worms' term of life to one month.
Altering a single nucleotide to eliminate the intervening stop codon between the two ORFs resulted in a single ORF encoding a predicted 253 amino acid protein which then yielded a contiguous, nearly full-length alignment with NetB.
Unlike that of other antituberculosis drugs, resistance to rifampin is acquired in most M. tuberculosis isolates by altering a single target molecule and offers the most appropriate and straightforward model to demonstrate possible hypermutability in this species.
Alter a single variable, said Tsurumaki, "and you see the impact on all the other systems.
The final refinement altered a single word: "will" became the more ambiguous "would".
Morris says that he has not altered a single bar of the score, and he defends Prokofiev's repetitions, saying that each time a theme returns it does so in a different guise.
"I said in my head, 'It's him or me.' " The Royal Court agreed with Mr. Bond's refusal to alter a single line that the Lord Chamberlain considered too violent, sexually suggestive or indecorous.
Baker estimates that 93 percent of "A Box of Matches" is autobiographical, but that if he alters a single detail from "reality," this necessitates calling the work a novel, which strikes me as absurd.
