Peptidomic Analysis of Amniotic Fluid for Identification of Putative Bioactive Peptides in Ventricular Septal Defect.

Background: Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is one of the most common congenital heart diseases and to date the role of peptides in human amniotic fluid in the pathogenesis of VSD have been rarely investigated.

Methods: To gain insight into the mechanisms of protein and peptides in cardiovascular development, we constructed a comparative peptidomic profiling of human amniotic fluid between normal and VSD fetuses using a stable isobaric labeling strategy involving tandem mass tag reagents, followed by nano liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.

Results: We identified and quantified 692 non-redundant peptides, 183 of which were differentially expressed in the amniotic fluid of healthy and VSD fetuses; 69 peptides were up regulated and 114 peptides were down regulated. These peptides were imported into the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) and identified putative roles in cardiovascular system morphogenesis and cardiogenesis.

Conclusion: We concluded that 35 peptides located within the functional domains of their precursor proteins could be candidate bioactive peptides for VSD. The identified peptide changes in amniotic fluid of VSD fetuses may advance our current understanding of congenital heart disease and these peptides may be involved in the etiology of VSD.