Abstract
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are important players in the communication between different kinds of cells by delivering their content, consisting of different types of RNA, proteins, bioactive lipids, or signaling nucleotides, into their target cells. Several types of EVs are distinguished: (1) exosomes with sizes from 30 to 150 nm originate from the endosomal pathway and form intracellular multivesicular bodies (MVBs), which fuse to the plasma membrane before their secretion. (2) EVs with sizes ranging from 100 to 1000 nm in diameter are formed during cell surface budding. (3) Apoptotic bodies with diameters from 500 to 2000 nm are released from blebbing of the cell membrane of apoptotic cells. It is well established that various RNA molecules such as coding RNAs and noncoding RNAs (long noncoding RNAs, microRNAs, circular RNAs, and rRNAs) are present in different amounts in EVs depending on the type and origin of EV. Here we will give an overview of methods to isolate different types of EVs and to quantify and characterize different RNA species.
Highlights
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are important players in the communication between different kinds of cells by delivering their content, consisting of different types of RNA, proteins, bioactive lipids, or signaling nucleotides, into their target cells
EVs released from viable cells are microvesicles (MVs or ectosomes), formed by plasma membrane budding with sizes from 100 to 1000 nm and exosomes originating from the endosomal compartment by fusion of multivesicular bodies with the plasma membrane with a size range from 30 to
Later studies have shown that EVs are surrounded by a lipid bilayer and shuttle various biological components such as proteins, different types of nucleic acid, and lipids between secreting and recipient cells to promote angiogenic, proinflammatory, and immune responses in target cells [6,7,8,9,10]
Summary
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a heterogenous family of membrane-limited vesicles, which are distinguished by their different origins and sizes. Circulating vesicles are composed of different types of EVs. it was demonstrated that a single cell type can release both exosomes and MVs [23,24]. Currently available purification methods do not allow fully discriminating between these different types of EVs, and a major ongoing challenge is to establish methods that will allow clearly distinguishing between exosomes and MVs. Extracellular RNA (exRNA) has been identified as a prothrombotic and proinflammatory factor, which is released from cells under pathological conditions by active and passive processes [25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32].
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