Fig. 4. Identification of cardioprotection-related proteins in normoxic and hypoxic EEVs.

(A) Heat map the log₂ mass abundance values for the groups of proteins enriched in the normoxic and hypoxic EEV expression profiles associated with IRI response, and possibly involved in cardioprotection by mitigating IRI-related pathological processes. (B) Heatmap illustrating the log₂ mass abundance values for the group of proteins enriched in the normoxic and hypoxic EEV protein expression profiles associated with preconditioning. (C) Protein-protein interaction network illustrating known interactions between the proteins comprising the groups of IRI response and preconditioning-related proteins observed in the normoxic and hypoxic protein expression profiles. (D) Schematic of potential cellular mechanisms of cardioprotection mediated by the groups of proteins discovered in the EEV samples, and the related IRI-induced pathological processes that are potentially mitigated. The different groups of proteins are represented in color coding corresponding to their representation in panel A. Orange arrows stand for pathological pathways and blue arrows indicate the counteractions.