Short-term, Long-term, and Genetic Determinants of Human Plasma Proteome Variability
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Plasma proteomics is increasingly used for biomarker discovery and predictive modeling, yet diurnal protein trajectories remain insufficiently characterized. In our review of recent proteomic biomarker studies, 43% of the identified biomarkers had previously been reported to display 24-h rhythmicity. We demonstrate that ignoring these short-term dynamic effects compromises the robustness of reported models predicting health outcomes. We integrated a population-scale multi-ethnic longitudinal cohort with repeated measures over 10 years, with two cohorts of healthy adults undergoing frequent plasma sampling across days under controlled circadian, sleep and food-intake conditions. This design enabled estimation of short-term intraindividual variability (ST), long-term intraindividual variability (LT), population-level variability (POP) and genetic effects (GEN) across 7,289 protein targets. ST, LT, POP, and GEN define diverse protein trajectories, including rapid dynamics, long-term change, and individual-specific signatures. Using and generalizing this framework will facilitate covariate selection, study design, biomarker prioritization, and variability-aware modeling by users of proteomic data.
