Abstract
Intercellular communication was long thought to be regulated exclusively through direct contact between cells or via release of soluble molecules that transmit the signal by binding to a suitable receptor on the target cell, and/or via uptake into that cell. With the discovery of small secreted vesicular structures that contain complex cargo, both in their lumen and the lipid membrane that surrounds them, a new frontier of signal transduction was discovered. These “extracellular vesicles” (EV) were initially thought to be garbage bags through which the cell ejected its waste. Whilst this is a major function of one type of EV, i.e., apoptotic bodies, many EVs have intricate functions in intercellular communication and compound exchange; although their physiological roles are still ill-defined. Additionally, it is now becoming increasingly clear that EVs mediate disease progression and therefore studying EVs has ignited significant interests among researchers from various fields of life sciences. Consequently, the research effort into the pathogenic roles of EVs is significantly higher even though their protective roles are not well established. The “Focus on extracellular vesicles” series of reviews highlights the current state of the art regarding various topics in EV research, whilst this review serves as an introductory overview of EVs, their biogenesis and molecular composition.
Highlights
Intercellular communication is mostly thought to be mediated by direct cellular interaction or through the secretion of soluble factors [1]
Increasingly evidence accumulates that cells modify the content of extracellular vesicles” (EV) in response to extrinsic stressors such as heat shock, hypothermia, hypoxia, oxidative stress, and infectious agents. These results suggest that the EVs are connected to intracellular signaling and are part of the global intricate mechanism to maintain physiological homeostasis; the levels of which we are just beginning to understand
A significant amount of knowledge regarding EVs has been accumulated over the past few years and researchers in various fields of life sciences have turned their attention to EVs, the field is still nascent and faces a number of potential hurdles: 1. Owing to the characteristics of EVs, past studies named them based on the sample source thereby creating multiple names, e.g., ectosomes have aliases such as exosome-like vesicles, shedding vesicles, microvesicles, nanoparticles, microparticles, and oncosomes
Summary
Intercellular communication is mostly thought to be mediated by direct cellular interaction or through the secretion of soluble factors [1]. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are proposed as a novel mode of intercellular communication for both short and longer-range signaling events [2,3,4]. EVs (Figure 1) carry a rich cargo of DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids and metabolites reflective of their cellular origin and are released into the extracellular space by multiple cell types during both physiological and pathological conditions [4,5]. Ectosomal enriched proteins are largely cell type dependent. Oncosomes are larger vesicles ranging from 1 to 10 μm in diameter that are thought to follow the biogenesis pathway of ectosomes and are extensively studied by Di Vizio and colleagues [25,38].
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