Fig. 2: Quantitative urinary proteomics analysis in CRC at the discovery stage.

a Score plot of unsupervised principal component analysis (PCA) overview of urinary proteomics among the healthy controls (HCs), CRC without metastases (NM), CRC with lymph node metastasis (LNM) and CRC with distant metastasis (DM) groups. b, c CRC tumor-related (three CRC groups vs. HC; b) and tumor progression-related (c) pathway networks. Pathways are grouped vertically into three classes: disease, function, and canonical pathways. The color of each node represents the −log10 (P value) of that pathway. The size of each node represents the number of differential proteins in that pathway/disease/function. Interactions between pairs of pathways are indicated by curves. d Heatmap of the dysregulated biofunctions in the three CRC patient groups depicted by IPA. Red: Z_score>0, activated; Blue: Z score<0, inhibited. e Heatmap of the dysregulated canonical pathways in the three CRC groups depicted by IPA. The color represents the −log10 (P value) of that pathway. f Schematic diagram of tumor progression-related pathways, including the RAC, CDC42, FAK, and RhoA signaling pathways. The protein levels in the HC, NM, LNM, and DM groups are shown. The color and the size of the circle within each gene represent the expression levels of different stages of CRC for each gene. CRC colorectal cancer, IPA ingenuity pathway analysis. In b, c, e, the P value is calculated using the right-tailed Fisher’s exact test without adjustments. The source data are provided in Source Data.