Hi, I have to do a comparison among three groups of genetic transcription levels. I have a situation like this: group 0: baseline group 1: first treatment group 2: second treatment In the first group, I have only 2 samples, in the second one 4 samples and in the last group I have 10 samples. I would check if the trnascription of a gene increases from the baseline situation to the fist treatment AND from the first treatment to the second treatment. I did a table like this: GENE-LEVEL, GROUP 10,0 12,0 22,1 23,1 21,1 24,1 31,2 32,2 33,2 32,2 31,2 32,2 33,2 31,2 32,2 33,2 and I did this analysis: lm(GENE-LEVEL~GROUP) using the GROUP as integer and not as level. Is it correct? and if the relationship is not strictly linear, ie the second treatment level is not the double of the first treatment, is this analysis still good? Mainly I would only check whether group0<group1<group2 (or viceversa group0>group1>group2) Thank you Michele Pinelli ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michele Pinelli, MD, PhD Complex Disease Genetics Unit Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology and Pathology "L. Califano" University "Federico II", Naples Italy michele.pinelli@unina.it Skype: dr.sson (Michele Pinelli/Naples, IT) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "People still respect science and technology. … There is a problem however. They have no idea what science is." by Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science [[alternative HTML version deleted]]