Skip to main content
Download PDF
- Main
Are females more variable than males in gene expression? Meta-analysis of microarray datasets
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13293-015-0036-8Abstract
Background
The majority of preclinical biomedical research involves studies of males rather than females. It is thought that researchers have avoided females based on the idea that female traits are more variable than those of males because of cyclic variation in effects of ovarian hormones.Methods
To test the assumption of inherently greater female variability, we analyzed 293 microarray datasets measuring gene expression in various tissues of mice and humans, comprising analysis of more than 5 million probes.Results
Meta-analysis showed that on average, male gene expression is slightly more variable than that of females although the difference is small. We also tested if the X chromosome of humans shows greater variability in gene expression in males than in females, as might be expected because of hemizygous exposure of polymorphic X alleles but again found little sex difference.Conclusion
Our analysis supports and extends previous studies reporting no overall greater phenotypic variability in females.Many UC-authored scholarly publications are freely available on this site because of the UC's open access policies. Let us know how this access is important for you.
Main Content
For improved accessibility of PDF content, download the file to your device.
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
File name:
-
File size:
-
Title:
-
Author:
-
Subject:
-
Keywords:
-
Creation Date:
-
Modification Date:
-
Creator:
-
PDF Producer:
-
PDF Version:
-
Page Count:
-
Page Size:
-
Fast Web View:
-
Preparing document for printing…
0%