Figure 4
Gender-based differences in the urinary EV proteome. (a) Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA, hallmarks) of the differential analysis between female- and male-derived urinary EVs was performed by ranking proteins based on the sign of their fold change and p-value, with proteins significantly overexpressed in females at the top of the list. Gene sets enriched in females are marked pink, and gene sets enriched in males are marked blue. The size of the dot reflects the significance of the enrichment (false discovery rate). (b) Volcano plot of the urinary EV protein expression levels between female and male samples. Colored dots indicate the 172 proteins that were significantly different between female or male samples. A total of 89 proteins were upregulated in males (left side, in blue), whereas 83 proteins were overexpressed in females (right side, pink). Proteins-of-interest that are shown in Fig. 4C are annotated in the plot. (c) Expression levels of selected female- (upper 2 panels) and male-specific (lower 2 panels) urinary EV proteins, showing an enrichment of gender-specific proteins in the expected samples. (d) Protein interaction networks enriched in female (left) and male (right) urinary EVs, predicted by clusterONE31.
