Fig. 3
The LC-MS/MS analysis revealed a set of candidate peptides differentiating the H. canis-infected group from the control group (A). Heatmap analysis illustrated peptide expression patterns between groups, where red columns represent control samples and green columns represent infected samples. Each row corresponds to a unique peptide detected by LC-MS/MS, with color intensity indicating relative peptide abundance. Orthogonal Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA) demonstrated clear separation between the two groups, highlighting distinct peptide expression profiles (B). Variable Importance in Projection (VIP) analysis identified the top 40 candidate peptides with VIP scores exceeding 2.0 (C). Volcano plot analysis identified differentially expressed peptides in the infected group compared to controls, including significantly upregulated, downregulated, and non-significant peptides (D). Notable candidates included PLEC (plectin), CHD7 (DNA helicase), THBS1 and THBS4 (thrombospondins), LRP2 and EGF-like domain-containing proteins, KMT2C (histone methyltransferase), EXPH5 (RabBD domain protein), Attractin-like 1, CENPF (centromere protein F), ZEB2 (zinc finger E-box binding protein), TNXB (tenascin XB), laminin subunits (LAMA5, gamma 1 and gamma 3), DMD (dystrophin), FBN2 and FBN3 (fibrillins), JAG1 (Delta-like protein), AQR (RNA helicase), GPATCH8, UBR5 (E3 ubiquitin ligase), ANK3 (ankyrin 3), and Stabilin 2.
