Fig. 5

Protein profile in skeletal muscle biopsies and their association with EV miRNAs in GDM. A–C miRNA gene target and gene ontology analysis for selected miRNAs. Gene ontology analysis for these gene targets showed enrichment for several biological processes. D Volcano plot showing differentially expressed proteins in skeletal muscles in GDM compared to NGT. The horizontal axis represents the log2 of fold change and the vertical axis represents the p-value. Each grey dot represents a protein with dots on the right of the zero are proteins upregulated while on the left are downregulated in GDM skeletal muscle. Each red dot represents proteins which are significantly differentially expressed with p value < 0.05. The proteins which are associated with diabetes and targeted by the exosome miRNAs on Pair Analysis are labelled. E On integration of EV miRNA and skeletal muscle protein expression profiles, we identified miRNA-targeted networks involved in regulation of skeletal muscle insulin signaling and glucose homeostasis. Each network displays the genes as nodes and the relationships between the nodes as lines. STAT 3 was identified to be a significant pathway targeting by multiple proteins (indicated by blue lines)