Fig 1.
Quality assessment and clustering of trusted protein expression data in A. cantonensis-infected and uninfected Lissachatina (Lis) and Pomacea (Pom) groups.
(A) Boxplots showing the distribution of relative standard deviation values across biological replicates for Lissachatina and Pomacea samples. (B) Histograms showing the number of identified proteins across different molecular weight (kDa) ranges of the Lissachatina and Pomacea samples. (C) Sample correlation plots of the A. cantonensis-infected and uninfected Lissachatina and Pomacea groups. (D) Pie charts showing the distribution of sequence coverage among identified proteins. The percentages represent the proportion of proteins within each sequence coverage interval.
Fig 2.
Overview of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in A. cantonensis-infected samples when compared to uninfected control samples for both the Lissachatina (Lis) and Pomacea (Pom) groups.
(A) Volcano plots illustrating differential protein expression using Fold Change (log₂) values, and p-values (-log₁₀). Red dots represent up-regulated proteins, blue dots represent down-regulated proteins, and gray dots represent non-significant proteins. Vertical dashed lines indicate the fold change thresholds (Fold Change = 1.2 and Fold Change = 1/1.2, or 0.833), and the horizontal dashed line indicates the p-value cutoff (p = 0.05). (B) Hierarchical cluster heat maps of DEPs. Heat maps were generated based on protein expression levels using unsupervised hierarchical clustering. Red indicates proteins with high expression levels, and blue indicates proteins with low expression levels. Each row represents a DEP, and each column represents a sample.
Fig 3.
Gene Ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in infected Lissachatina (Lis) and Pomacea (Pom) groups.
(A) Bar plots showing the total number of Level 2 Gene Ontology (GO) annotated DEPs, categorized into Biological Process, Cellular Component, and Molecular Function. (B) Bubble chart of the top five significantly enriched GO terms per ontology category. Bubble size indicates the number of associated proteins, while color intensity represents statistical significance (red = lower adjusted p-value). Only GO terms with more than one protein were included. Enrichment was assessed via hypergeometric testing with Benjamini–Hochberg correction, and results are shown as adjusted p-values and enrichment scores. Note: Full details of GO terms can be found in S1 Dataset.
Fig 4.
KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in infected Lissachatina (Lis) and Pomacea (Pom) groups.
(A) Bubble plot of the top 20 most significantly enriched KEGG pathways (Level 3 classification) based on p-values (-log₁₀). Bubble size represents gene count, and color scale denotes significance (p-value). (B) Bar graph summarizing the top 20 KEGG categories (Level 2) derived from the annotated pathways. (C) Bar chart illustrating the number of upregulated and downregulated DEPs within each Level 2 KEGG category. Note: Full details of GO terms can be found in S1 Dataset.
Table 1.
Top ten hub proteins in PPA networks of infected Lissachatina and Pomacea groups, ranked by degree value (number of associations per protein). Higher degree values indicate proteins with greater network connectivity and potential central regulatory roles. Proteins found in both snail species are shown in bold.
Fig 5.
Protein–protein association (PPA) networks of the top 25 differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) in Lissachatina (LIS) and Pomacea (POM) groups following A. cantonensis infection.
The PPA networks were generated using STRING and visualized with Cytoscape, highlighting significant DEPs. Each node represents a protein, and each connecting line (edge) represents a predicted functional association between proteins. Node size reflects degree centrality (the number of connections a protein has within the network), indicating its relative importance, while node color denotes log₂ fold change (red = upregulated, green = downregulated). Note: Full details of GO terms can be found in S1 Dataset.