Metabolic rate does not scale with body mass in cultured mammalian cells.

The allometric scaling of metabolic rate with organism body mass can be partially accounted for by differences in cellular metabolic rates. For example, hepatocytes isolated from horses consume almost 10-fold less oxygen per unit time as mouse hepatocytes [Porter and Brand, Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 269: R226-R228, 1995]. This could reflect a genetically programmed, species-specific, intrinsic metabolic rate set point, or simply the adaptation of individual cells to their particular in situ environment (i.