Changes in the ascending aorta proteome of cholesterol-fed rabbits

Here we undertook a proteomic investigation of ascending aorta from New Zealand White rabbits after 10 weeks on a high (2% w/w) cholesterol diet (HCD, n=5) or control diet (n=5) in order to profile the proteomic changes in response to the HCD. Histology confirmed intimal thickening in the HCD group and LC-MS/MS analysis of individually obtained ascending aorta extracts labelled with isobaric (iTRAQ) tags led to identification and quantitation of 453 unique proteins above the 1% false discovery rate threshold. Of 67 proteins showing significant differences in relative abundance (p<0.05), 62 were elevated and five decreased in ascending aorta from HCD-fed rabbits compared to controls. Six proteins were selected for validation using Multiple Reaction Monitoring which confirmed the iTRAQ results.