Table 1.
Data analysis nomenclature.
Fig 1.
Comparison of workflow for 2-step and 1-step calibration methods, illustrated for calibrating band intensities on immunoblots.
A. Illustration of samples 1 (the standard) through 7, run on 5 different immunoblots with variable replication. The band intensities shown depend on the sample, blot, and experimental noise. B. Tabulated data showing assigned band intensities for each sample and blot. C. Direct comparison of the conventional 2-step calibration method (left) with the 1-step calibration method (right). D. Plots of the calibrated estimates of analyte amounts in each sample using the different methods. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean (precision of estimate) and numbers above the bars represent the number of calibrated measurements of each sample.
Fig 2.
Comparison of the 1-step and 2-step methods using artificial data.
A. Sample analyte amounts for an artificial data set. Here and in subsequent panels, black features represent the true analyte amounts, gray features represent results from the 2-step method, and red features represent results from the 1-step method. Error bars represent standard errors. (B-D) Comparison of computed sample analyte amounts, a sensitivity coefficients, and b sensitivity coefficients with their true values for the same artificial data set. (E-G) Histograms of errors between fit values and true values for computed sample analyte amounts, a sensitivity coefficients, and b sensitivity coefficients for 1000 artificial data sets. Note that the 1-step method yields more accurate data calibration. See main text for details.
Fig 3.
Calibrated experimental immunoblot data.
This figure shows calibrated analyte amounts for 40 of our 230 samples that we analyzed with immunoblots. The others were qualitatively similar. Gray bars represent results from the 2-step method, red bars represent results from the 1-step method, and error bars represent standard error values. On average, there were 3.4 calibrated measurements for each sample with the 2-step method and 4.9 for the 1-step method. Note that the 1-step method results have smaller standard errors.