Fig. 1
Multivariate modelling reveals that protein alterations within 14 functional groups discriminate carotid atheromas between men and women. Carotid endarterectomy lesions (n = 20, equal sex ratio) were sampled from and analysed by tandem-MS. a Protein abundances were analysed by multivariate modelling, via orthogonal partial least squares to latent structure discriminate analysis (OPLS-DA), comparing the overall protein abundance between men and women. Loading plot corresponding to proteins with a variable influence on projection (VIP) value > 1.2 were retained, totalling 43 proteins. Resulting model was considered significant with R2 = 0.83, Q2 = 0.49 and a CV-ANOVA of p = 0.036. The x-axis, pq[1], and y-axis, poco[1], depict the predictive component loadings, and the first orthogonal loading, respectively. Proteins to the left of the origin discriminate towards lesion samples from men, and proteins to the right of the origin discriminate towards lesions samples from women. Protein accession numbers correspond to those reported in the UniProt database, and presented in Table 2. b Retained proteins from multivariate modelling were grouped by biological process into 14 groups, using information obtained from the UniProt database