Effect of adding control genes (highlighted) as priors on the estimates of fixed effects of stress in the coral dataset.

The points are posterior means, the 95% credible intervals are denoted as dashed lines connecting upper and lower interval limits across genes. (a) Comparison between naïve model (no control genes specified) and two informed models, with one (nd5) or two (nd5, rpl11) control genes specified (the control genes were allowed to change 1.2-fold on average in response to fixed factors). (b) Comparison of the naïve and two-gene informed model to the two-gene fixed model, in which the same control genes were required to be absolutely stable.