Often you want to investigate how the total volume of a mixture impacts the biological system you are studying. This is a common application when the aim of your DOE campaign is to miniaturise reaction volumes for example.
In Synthace, this specifically relates to the Final Target Volume parameter in both the Make Mixtures and Mix Onto elements.
In this tutorial you will learn:
Where to add a numerical volume factor.
How to define the volume levels you want to investigate
How to set a numerical factor as a Quasi-Replicate
How to set a numerical factor as Hard To Change
How to set a numerical factor to sample discretely, or across a range of values.
Defining a numerical volume factor
Adding a new numerical volume factor.
Build a workflow that defines a set of liquids and provides those liquids to a Make Mixtures element.
Switch the workflow builder into DOE Mode.
Note: only the elements that can have DOE factors applied to their parameters will be interactive and display in colour. If the workflow has not already been added to a Synthace experiment you will be prompted to do so before being able to enter DOE mode.
Select the Make Mixtures element and toggle the Final Target Volume parameter to identify that you intend to investigate volume with a DOE factor.
Click the adjacent factor button in the Instance Panel to launch the DOE Factor Panel.
Click the “ADD” button to select a factor type. In this example there is only a single option for volume-based parameters and that is the numerical factor option.
Note: If you have at least one other factor defined already, you will also see an option to define a derived factor here. To learn more about derived factors, click here.
Select the “New Factor” Option to open the Factor Definition Panel.
Defining factor properties
Auto-suggestion of factor names
Final Target Volume parameters, when being treated as a DOE factor, are automatically given a default factor name of “TargetVolume”. You can give this a custom name should you want to. In the following example, this factor is called “Reaction Volume”.
Setting Factor Properties
Select the units for this factor.
Input the levels you want to investigate. Click the “Add New Item” button to add additional levels for your factor.
To treat this factor as a Quasi-Replicate tick the check box. To learn more about quasi-replicating factors see here.
Note: making a factor a quasi-replicate will disable the sampling control panel, as all quasi-replicate factors are sampled discretely at the levels that were defined above.
To treat this factor as Hard To Change tick the check box. To learn more about Hard to Change factors see here.
Note: making a factor Hard to Change will disable the sampling control panel, as all hard to change factors are sampled discretely at the levels that were defined above.
If you intend to use a space filling design in your experiment, choose whether you want to sample your defined levels discretely or across a range.
Note: if sampling across a range, when calculating the space filling design, only the lowest and highest levels defined will be considered. Any intermediate levels defined here will be disregarded.
Click on “Save Factor” to save the factor to your Factor Table, where you will see a summary of the factors’ settings.
Note: Once the Final Target Volume parameter is defined, the button in the instance panel will update to say that it has been “Factorised”.
Well done on making it to the end of this tutorial.
To learn how to define a custom numerical factor, click here.
To learn how to use numerical volume factors in a media optimisation example, click here.
To learn about other factor types, click here.