A guide to analysis of mouse energy metabolism

© 2012 EPFL

A guide to analysis of mouse energy metabolism.

Johan Auwerx ( Laboratory of Integrative Systems Physiology LISP ), in collaboration with researchers from the USA, UK and Germany present a consolidated view of the complexity and challenges of designing studies for measurement of energy metabolism in mouse models, including a practical guide to the assessment of energy expenditure, energy intake and body composition and statistical analysis thereof. They hope this guide will facilitate comparisons across studies and minimize spurious interpretations of data. They recommend that division of energy expenditure data by either body weight or lean body weight and that presentation of group effects as histograms should be replaced by plotting individual data and analyzing both group and body-composition effects using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA).

Matthias H Tschöp et al., Nature Methods 9, 57–63 (2012) doi:10.1038/nmeth.1806