Proteomic characteristics and comparison of dysregulated proteins in exosomes derived from patients with sepsis at different stages. (A-C) Volcano plots of proteins in serum exosomes from patients with sepsis (A), severe sepsis (B) and septic shock (C). The black points represent proteins without significant changes, and the red and green points represent the upregulated and downregulated proteins with |log2FC| > 0.585 and P-values < 0.05 compared to those of the control group, respectively. (D) Venn diagram for the dysregulated proteins unique to the different stages of sepsis or shared among all stages of sepsis. (E) MCODE analysis of common upregulated proteins in sepsis. PPI networks were constructed based on STRING, and the hub subclasses of the network were filtered with MCODE in Cytoscape. (F) GO enrichment analysis on the three subclasses of protein interaction networks for common upregulated proteins in sepsis. (G-I) Metascape pathway and process enrichment for DEPs specifically dysregulated in serum exosomes from patients with sepsis (G), severe sepsis (H) and septic shock (I).