attenuation

1. The act of attenuating.

2. Diminution of virulence in a strain of an organism, obtained through selection of variants which occur naturally or through experimental means.

3. Loss of energy of a beam of radiant energy due to absorption, scattering, beam divergence, and other causes as the beam propagates through a medium.

4. Regulation of termination of transcription; involved in control of gene expression in specific tissues.