Sex-related physiology of the preimplantation embryo

Male and female preimplantation mammalian embryos differ not only in their chromosomal complement, but in their proteome and subsequent metabolome. This phenomenon is due to a finite period during preimplantation development when both X chromosomes are active, between embryonic genome activation and X chromosome inactivation, around the blastocyst stage. Consequently, prior to implantation male and female embryos exhibit differences in their cellular phenotype. Manifestations of such differences include altered total activity of specific X-linked enzymes and the metabolic pathways they regulate. Subsequently, one would expect to be able to determine differences in the rate of consumption and utilization of specific nutrients between male and female embryos. Data to date on animal models support this, with sex-specific differences in glucose and amino acid utilization being reported for the mouse and cow blastocysts. Such differences in metabolic phenotype may logically be involved in the reported differences in growth rates between preimplantation embryos of different sex. As the fields of proteomics and metabolomics are being increasingly applied to human assisted conception it is prudent to consider how such technologies may be applied to identify sex differences in the human embryo. Such data would have implications far beyond current invasive technologies used to identify the sex of an embryo conceived in vitro for the diagnosis of X-linked diseases.