Table 2.

NMR studies of animal embryo SCM. CL, cleavage stage; BL, blastocyst stage; IVF, in vitro fertilization; PA, parthenogenetically activated; Cit, citrate; Pyr, pyruvate; Lys, lysine; Ac, acetate; Phe, phenylalanine; His, histidine; Trp, tryptophan; Val, valine; Glc, glucose; Lac, lactate; Thy, thymine; Pro, proline; Ala, alanine, Ile, isoleucine; n.a., not available.

study model	study type	study	study population	analysis carried out	metabolic changes observed
					upregulated	downregulated
bovine	2-day culture, IVF-derived and parthenogenetic-activated embryos	Rubessa et al. [110]	CL 20, BL 20,	blastocyst development	Cit, Pyr and Lys	Myo-inositol
			IVF 20, PA 20	IVF versus PA	Phe	↓OAc
	individual culture and group culture (30/drop)	Perkel et al. [111]	113	fast-growing and slow-growing embryos	4 cell-Pyr	4 cell: n.a.
					8 cell and 16 cell: His, Trp, Val	8 cell and 16 cell: n.a.
					2 cell and 16 cell: Ile, Leu	2 cell and 16 cell: n.a.
	group culture system	Rubessa et al. [83]	male 20, female 20	sex determination of embryo at early (1–3 days) and late development stage (5–7 days)	1–2 days: Val	1–2 days: n.a.
					5–7 days: n.a.	5–7 days: Pyr
mouse	group culture (10/drop)	D'Souza et al. [112]	185	embryo carrying induced DNA lesion on day 3.5	Glc, Lac, Pyr, Thy, Pro, Val, Ala, Ile and Lys	n.a.
	individual culture	D'Souza et al. [93]	118	blastocyst in vitro outgrowth	Pyr and Lac	Pyr/Ala
	individual culture	D'Souza et al. [113]	90	blastocyst	Pyr	Ala, Pyr/Ala and Pyr/Lac