Label-Free Quantitative Proteomic Profiling Identifies Potential Active Components to Exert Pharmacological Effects in the Fruit of Alpinia oxyphylla by Mass Spectrometry

To explore the relationship between fruit developmental periods and the protein datasets of Alpinia oxyphylla, a label-free quantitative proteomic profiling analysis of the A. oxyphylla fruits sampled at the Earlystage, Metaphase and Advanced stage was carried out using the liquid chromatography combined with tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 19,219 peptide fragments and 4946 quantitative proteins were obtained. Annotation and enrichment analysis of these peptides and proteins were performed using the Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases with bioinformatics software. The results showed that the differentially expressed proteins were mainly involved in metabolic and cellular processes, cellular component organization or biogenesis and response to the stimulus. Three significantly enriched metabolic pathways were non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, vibrio cholera infection and valine, leucine and isoleucine degradation. The significantly enriched proteins were NADH dehydrogenase, putative vacuolar proton translocation ATPase and putative acyltransferase component. The proteomic profiles of the fruit samples from the Advanced and the Metaphase stages differed little, while the difference in proteomic components between the Earlystage and the Advanced groups was significant. This study should lay the theoretical foundation for the effective utilization of A. oxyphylla germplasm resource in the treatment of human diseases.