OBJECTIVETo screen obesity-related protein biomarkers of young men using differential proteomic method and OffGel electrophoresis.

METHODSTen male obese volunteers with the age of 18 - 44 years were selected. The control group was matched with the ratio of 1:1 considering the factors of age and gender etc. Two milliliter venous blood was collected after 8 hours fasting. Albumin and IgG were removed from the plasma samples with highly specific immune-affinity method. Then the peptide-mixed samples were separated by pI with OffGel electrophoresis after solution digestion. Further separation and identification were performed by Nano HPLC-Chip-MS/MS system. The different proteins between the two groups were compared.

RESULTSOverall, 332 and 301 proteins were identified in the obesity and control groups, respectively. There were 43 proteins with significant differences between the two groups, 17 of which were in the control group and 26 in the obesity group. Protein function annotation results showed that the level of adiponectin was lower while the level of C-reaction protein and three other phosphatases were higher in the obesity group compared with the control group.

CONCLUSIONAdiponectin, C-reaction protein and three phosphatases were closely related to obesity of young men.