Fig. 7: Global proteomics and phosphoproteomic analysis in human aortic smooth muscle cells.

hASMCs were transfected with STK25 siRNA or NTC siRNA. a Schematic presentation of the experimental design. b Volcano plot of the log-transformed fold change and significance of differentially enriched proteins. A ratio of 1.4-fold (vertical dashed lines) and a P value of 0.05 (horizontal dashed line) serve as the threshold for differential expression. Stacked bar plot showing the total number of differentially expressed unique peptides and proteins. c Heat map of the scaled abundance of significantly changed proteins. The functions are indicated to the left. d Scatter plot of the log-transformed fold change of total protein abundance and the log-transformed fold change of phosphoproteins. Stacked bar plot showing the total number of differentially expressed unique phosphopeptides and phosphoproteins that were not driven by underlying changes in the abundance of corresponding proteins. A ratio of 1.4-fold (vertical and horizontal dashed lines) and a P value of 0.05 serve as the threshold for differential expression. e Heat map of the scaled abundance of significantly changed phosphoproteins. The functions are indicated to the left. f Consensus sequences were extracted from the peptides with downregulated phosphorylation events in STK25-depleted hASMCs using the WebLogo application³⁷. The residue position in relation to the phosphorylation site is shown on the X-axis and the information content is shown on the Y-axis, where the height of each position is representing the certainty level of possibly presented residues in that position. For empty positions, there were not enough information to determine its composition. The colors of the amino acids correspond to their chemical properties; polar amino acids (G, S, T, Y, C, Q, and N) are shown in green, basic amino acids (K, R, and H) are shown in blue, acidic amino acids (D and E) are shown in red, and hydrophobic amino acids (A, V, L, I, P, W, F, and M) are shown in black. FC, fold change; Fib., fibrosis; Infl., inflammation; Ox., oxidative stress.