Human Genomics and Proteomics
Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 164906, 14 pages
doi:10.4061/2010/164906
Research Article

Gender Dependence for a Subset of the Low-Abundance Signaling Proteome in Human Platelets

Ofer Eidelman,1 Catherine Jozwik,1 Wei Huang,1 Meera Srivastava,1 Stephen W. Rothwell,1 David M. Jacobowitz,2 Xiaoduo Ji,1 Xiuying Zhang,1 William Guggino,3 Jerry Wright,3 Jeffrey Kiefer,4 Cara Olsen,5 Nima Adimi,1 Gregory P. Mueller,1 and Harvey B. Pollard1

1Department of Anatomy, Physiology and Genetics, USU Center for Medical Proteomics, Uniformed Services University, School of Medicine, USUHS, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA
2National Institute for Mental Health, NIH, 9500 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
3Department of Physiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA
4Translational Genomics Research Institute, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
5Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, USUHS, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA

Received 3 November 2009; Accepted 5 January 2010

Academic Editor: Eric Haura

Copyright © 2010 Ofer Eidelman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The incidence of cardiovascular diseases is ten-times higher in males than females, although the biological basis for this gender disparity is not known. However, based on the fact that antiplatelet drugs are the mainstay for prevention and therapy, we hypothesized that the signaling proteomes in platelets from normal male donors might be more activated than platelets from normal female donors. We report here that platelets from male donors express significantly higher levels of signaling cascade proteins than platelets from female donors. In silico connectivity analysis shows that the 24 major hubs in platelets from male donors focus on pathways associated with megakaryocytic expansion and platelet activation. By contrast, the 11 major hubs in platelets from female donors were found to be either negative or neutral for platelet-relevant processes. The difference may suggest a biological mechanism for gender discrimination in cardiovascular disease.