From all possible units (species, populations, individuals, genomes, genes, and so on) the gene is the one that best approximates the abstract informational replicator, minimizing the variable but non-heritable part.
Whether you're testing different medical treatments, or comparing different marketing campaigns, it's important to minimize the variables other than the one thing you're testing for.
Although we minimized the variables as much as possible, there are still some limitations in the study.
To enable the comparison between arrays, a global scaling factor (target signal to 500) was used across all arrays to minimize the variables caused by sample preparation, hybridization/ staining or from different lots of arrays.
One main advantage of our study, and in which our study differs from others, is that we compare one AGC design with another design of the same implant, which minimizes the variables that differ between the two groups of patients, especially with respect to surgical technique and materials used.
To minimize the variables influencing the test, all good laboratory practice principles were applied: immediate storage of samples after serum separation at −20°C; manual execution of tests in close agreement to the manufacturer's instructions; execution of all tests over two consecutive days in order to avoid repeated freeze/thaw cycles of samples.
Given the transcriptional complexity of some loci and the dynamic nature of transcript and locus annotations over time, it was important to capture the exact region spanning at least 80% of the 11 Affymetrix probes to minimize the variable expression patterns between the array and ISH.
It is more convenient, however, to restrict the term only to that most bare-boned, individual part of the organism, that still holds the abstract genotype (that is, to minimize the variable but non-heritable part) - the genome or the set of chromosomes.
Then, MR intensity values were divided by normalizing intensities to minimize the variability due to variable patients' morphologies, variable MR acquisition gain and slightly variable TR and TE parameters.
