The omic experiment
Experimental design
Areas that require careful thought include:
• the use of suitable biological samples: the choice
of the sample type to investigate is dependent on
the objectives of the experiment and the
availability of the sample
• the technical/analytical variation: this is the relative
standard deviation of a specific experimental
technique and this needs to be validated
• the biological variation: in humans this can be
very large, therefore it is important to collect
meta-data and, in certain study designs, to match
comparison groups strongly, to ensure that
changes are not due to confounding factors.