In the
biological sciences
Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...
, replicates are an experimental units that are treated identically. Replicates are an essential component of experimental design because they provide an estimate of between sample error. Without replicates, scientists are unable to assess whether observed treatment effects are due to the experimental manipulation or due to random error. There are also analytical replicates which is when an exact copy of a sample is analyzed, such as a cell, organism or molecule, using exactly the same procedure. This is done in order to check for analytical error. In the absence of this type of error replicates should yield the same result. However, analytical replicates are not independent and cannot be used in tests of the hypothesis because they are still the same sample.
See also
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Self-replication
Self-replication is any behavior of a dynamical system that yields construction of an identical or similar copy of itself. Biological cells, given suitable environments, reproduce by cell division. During cell division, DNA is replicated and c ...
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Fold change
Fold change is a measure describing how much a quantity changes between an original and a subsequent measurement. It is defined as the ratio between the two quantities; for quantities ''A'' and ''B'' the fold change of ''B'' with respect to ''A' ...
References
Biological processes
Measurement
Scientific method
Tests
Validity (statistics)
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