Prevalence of sexual dimorphism in mammalian phenotypic traits

Authors: Natasha A. Karp, Jeremy Mason, Arthur L. Beaudet, Yoav Benjamini, Lynette Bower, Robert E. Braun, Steve D. M. Brown, Elissa J. Chesler, Mary E. Dickinson, Ann M. Flenniken, Helmut Fuchs, Martin Hrabě de Angelis, Xiang Gao, Shiying Guo, Simon Greenaway, Ruth Heller, Yann Hérault, Monica J. Justice, Natalja Kurbatova, Christopher J. Lelliott, K. C. Kent Lloyd, Ann‐Marie Mallon, Judith E. Mank, Hiroshi Masuya, Colin McKerlie, Terrence F. Meehan, Richard Mott, Stephen A. Murray, Helen Parkinson, Ramiro Ramírez‐Solis, Luís Santos, John R. Seavitt, Damian Smedley, Tania Sorg, Anneliese O. Speak, Karen P. Steel, Karen L. Svenson, Yuichi Obata, Tomohiro Suzuki, Masaru Tamura, Hideki Kaneda, Tamio Furuse, Kimio Kobayashi, Ikuo Miura, Ikuko Yamada, Nobuhiko Tanaka, Atsushi Yoshiki, Shinya Ayabe, David Clary, Heather Tolentino, Michael Schuchbauer, Todd Tolentino, J Aprile, Sheryl Pedroia, Lois Kelsey, Igor Vukobradovic, Zorana Berberovic, Celeste Owen, Dawei Qu, Ruolin Guo, Susan Newbigging, Lily Morikawa, Napoleon Law, Xueyuan Shang, Patricia Feugas, Yanchun Wang, Mohammad Eskandarian, Yingchun Zhu, Lauryl M. J. Nutter, Patricia Penton, Valerie Laurin, Shannon Clarke, Qing Lan, Khondoker Sohel, D. Craig Miller, Greg Clark, Jane Hunter, Jorge Cabezas, Mohammed Bubshait, Tracy Carroll, Sandra Tondat, S. MacMaster, Monica Pereira, Marina Gertsenstein, Ozge Danisment, Elsa Jacob, Amie Creighton, Gillian Sleep, James D. Clark, Lydia Teboul, Martin Fray, Adam Caulder, Jorik Loeffler, Gemma Codner, James Cleak, Sara Johnson, Zsombor Szoke-Kovacs, Adam Radage, Marina Maritati, Joffrey Mianné, Wendy Gardiner, Susan Allen, Heather Cater, Michelle Stewart, Piia Keskivali-Bond, Caroline Sinclair, Ellen Brown, Brendan Doe, Hannah Wardle‐Jones, Evelyn Grau, Nicola Griggs, Mike Woods, Helen Kundi, Mark Griffiths, Christian Kipp, David Melvin, Navis Pretheeba Raj, S. Holroyd, David J. Gannon, Rafael Alcántara, Antonella Galli, Yvette Hooks, Catherine Tudor, Angela L. Green, Fiona Kussy, Elizabeth Tuck, Emma Siragher, Simon A. Maguire, David Lafont, Valerie E. Vancollie, Selina Pearson, Amy S. Gates, Mark Sanderson, Carl Shannon, Lauren F. E. Anthony, Maksymilian T. Sumowski, Robbie S. B. McLaren, Agnieszka Świątkowska, Christopher Isherwood, Emma L. Cambridge, Heather Wilson, Susana Caetano, Cecilia Mazzeo, Monika Dabrowska, Charlotte Lillistone, Jeanne Estabel, Anna Karin B. Maguire, Laura-Anne Roberson, Guillaume Pavlovic, Marie‐Christine Birling, Wattenhofer-Donze Marie, Sylvie Jacquot, Abdel Ayadi, Dalila Ali-Hadji, Philippe Charles, Philippe André, Elise Le Marchand, Amal El Amri, Laurent Vasseur, Juan Antonio Aguilar‐Pimentel, Lore Becker, Irina Treise, Kristin Moreth, Tobias Stoeger, Oana V. Amarie, Frauke Neff, Wolfgang Wurst, Raffi Bekeredjian, Markus Ollert, Thomas Klopstock, Julia Calzada‐Wack, Susan Marschall, Robert Brommage, Ralph Steinkamp, Christoph Lengger, Manuela A. Östereicher, Holger Maier, Claudia Stoeger, Stefanie Leuchtenberger, Ali Önder Yildrim, Lillian Garrett, Sabine M. Hölter, Annemarie Zimprich, Claudia Seisenberger, Antje Bürger, Jochen Graw, Oliver Eickelberg, Andreas Zimmer, Eckhard Wolf, Dirk H. Busch, Martin Klingenspor, Carsten B. Schmidt‐Weber, Valérie Gailus‐Durner, Johannes Beckers, Birgit Rathkolb, Jan Rozman, Shigeharu Wakana, David West, Sara Wells, Henrik Westerberg, Shay Yaacoby, Jacqueline K. White - Nature Communications 2017 cited by 272

The role of sex in biomedical studies has often been overlooked, despite evidence of sexually dimorphic effects in some biological studies. Here, we used high-throughput phenotype data from 14,250 wildtype and 40,192 mutant mice (representing 2,186 knockout lines), analysed for up to 234 traits, and found a large proportion of mammalian traits both in wildtype and mutants are influenced by sex. This result has implications for interpreting disease phenotypes in animal models and humans.