Fig. 1.

Preparation and proteomic analysis of acellular cartilage matrix. A) Preparation of ACM by decellularization and enzymolysis procedures. B) Quantitative analysis of DNA content, GAG content, and collagen content. C) Venn diagram showing the number of proteins identified in native and ACM tissues. D) Volcano plot showing the significantly high-retention (red dots, FC > 2, P value < 0.05) and low-retention (green dots, FC < 0.5, P value < 0.05) proteins in ACM versus native cartilage. E) Heatmap and hierarchical cluster analysis using protein expression data from ACM and native tissues. Notice the biological variation in both ACM and native tissue samples (orange). F) Protein–protein interaction network of preserved proteins mainly associated with ECM in ACM (red represents high-retention proteins, green represents low-retention proteins). G) GO enrichment analysis and H) KEGG enrichment analysis of the differentially reserved proteins in the ACM and showing the top 20 enrichment terms. I) GO enrichment analysis of the lost proteins in ACM and showing the top 20 GO enrichment terms and J) top 30 of level 2 GO terms. **p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)