Sex differences in allometry for mouse phenotypic traits indicate that females are not scaled males

Abstract

AbstractSex differences in the lifetime risk and expression of disease are well-known. Preclinical research targeted at improving treatment, increasing health span, and reducing the financial burden of health care, has mostly been conducted on male animals and cells. The extent to which sex differences in phenotypic traits are explained by sex differences in body weight remains unclear. We quantify sex differences in the allometric relationship between trait value and body weight for 375 phenotypic traits in male and female mice, recorded in >2.1 million measurements from the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium. We find sex differences in allometric parameters (slope, intercept, residual SD) are common (76% traits). Body weight differences do not explain all sex differences in trait values but scaling by weight may be useful for some traits. Our results support a trait-specific patterning of sex differences in phenotypic traits, promoting case-specific approaches to drug dosage scaled by body weight.