Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25808601›Full record

ArticleBiology2015

Body-Mass Scaling of Metabolic Rate: What are the Relative Roles of Cellular versus Systemic Effects?

Douglas S Glazier

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
18citing papers in PubMed
5.3field-weighted citation impact, top 5% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

18 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Establishment of cell size-dependent growth rate via differential scaling of metabolite uptake and release.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Metabolic regulation of endothelial senescence.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2023
    Review
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Review
  12. Scaling of joint mass and metabolism fluctuations in in silico cell-laden spheroids.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021
    Article
  13. Activity alters how temperature influences intraspecific metabolic scaling: testing the metabolic-level boundaries hypothesis.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2020
    Article
  14. Article
  15. Oxygen Consumption Characteristics in 3D Constructs Depend on Cell Density.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2019
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Allometric scaling in-vitro.Scientific reports · 2017
    Article
  18. The bioenergetic costs of a gene.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.

Douglas S GlazierDepartment of Biology, Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA 16652, USA. glazier@juniata.edu.
Juniata College · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The reason why metabolic rate often scales allometrically (disproportionately) with body mass has been debated for decades. A critical question concerns whether metabolic scaling is controlled intrinsically at the intracellular level or systemically at the organismal level. Recently, the relative importance of these effects has been tested by examining the metabolic rates of cultured dermal fibroblast and skeletal muscle cells in relation to donor body mass of a variety of birds and mammals. The lack of a relationship between in vitro cellular metabolic rates and body mass suggests that systemic effects, not intrinsic cellular effects are responsible for allometric metabolic scaling observed in whole organisms. Influential resource-transport network theory claims that the most important systemic effect involved is body-size related resource-supply limits to metabolizing cells. However, comparisons of in vitro cellular metabolic rates with scaling relationships for in vivo (basal) metabolic rates suggest that other systemic effects, such as body-size dependent biological regulation and tissue composition may also have major, perhaps more important effects. Furthermore, systemic effects must ultimately act at the cellular level, for example, by induced variation in the function, structure and intracellular densities of mitochondria. The mechanistic pathways involved require further study.

Identifiers

PMID25808601
PMCPMC4381225
OpenAlexW2070681860

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.