Quantitative analysis of proteomic profiling in constipation colon biopsies

Abstract Background Chronic constipation is a common disease and between 2% and 27% of people are suffering from it in the world. Rare studies explore the diversity of genetic polymorphisms and cell metabolisms in constipation. This study provided a first analysis of constipation-related proteomic data. Methods To help elucidate the potential mechanisms responsible for constipation, proteomic profiling of human colon biopsy specimens was performed. Dysregulated proteins in disease tissues compared with normal tissues were characterized from the expression profiles by Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry and Tandem Mass Tag proteomic methodology and further subjected to pathway analysis to identify altered biological processes and signaling pathways. Results A total of 5,208 proteins were identified, of which 4,522 had quantitative information. All the differentially expressed proteins displayed fold change greater than 1.3 were considered as dysregulated. Specifically, 42 proteins were up-regulated and 23 proteins were down-regulated in constipation samples. Bioinformatics analysis showed that most of the differentially expressed proteins were involved in the cellular process, single-organism process, metabolic process, biological regulation and response to stimulus. Pathway analysis of dysregulated proteins in constipation showed that the up-regulated proteins mainly participated in drug metabolism-cytochrome P450. Conclusions The TMT method followed by mass spectrometric analysis was applied to study the biopsy proteomic profiling alterations in constipation patients. Our results clearly proved that different protein profiles and signaling pathways were involved in constipation patients.