Sample size and power calculation for molecular biology studies.

Abstract

Sample size calculation is a critical procedure when designing a new biological study. In this chapter, we consider molecular biology studies generating huge dimensional data. Microarray studies are typical examples, so that we state this chapter in terms of gene microarray data, but the discussed methods can be used for design and analysis of any molecular biology studies involving high-dimensional data. In this chapter, we discuss sample size calculation methods for molecular biology studies when the discovery of prognostic molecular markers is performed by accurately controlling false discovery rate (FDR) or family-wise error rate (FWER) in the final data analysis. We limit our discussion to the two-sample case.