Cells release subpopulations of exosomes with distinct molecular and biological properties

By Eduard Willms, H. Johansson, Imre Mäger, Y. Lee, K. Blomberg, M. Sadik, Amr Alaarg, C. I. Smith, Janne Lehtiö, S. E. Andaloussi and 2 more. Scientific Reports, 2016

883 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Cells release nano-sized membrane vesicles that are involved in intercellular communication by transferring biological information between cells. It is generally accepted that cells release at least three types of extracellular vesicles (EVs): apoptotic bodies, microvesicles and exosomes. While a wide range of putative biological functions have been attributed to exosomes, they are assumed to represent a homogenous population of EVs. We hypothesized the existence of subpopulations of exosomes with defined molecular compositions and biological properties. Density gradient centrifugation of isolated exosomes revealed the presence of two distinct subpopulations, differing in biophysical properties and their proteomic and RNA repertoires. Interestingly, the subpopulations mediated differential effects on the gene expression programmes in recipient cells. In conclusion, we demonstrate that cells release distinct exosome subpopulations with unique compositions that elicit differential effects on recipient cells. Further dissection of exosome heterogeneity will advance our understanding of exosomal biology in health and disease and accelerate the development of exosome-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

Subfields: Cancer Research, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41bf783287805e73c222326b965b19711fc86878

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Cancer Research

In Molecular Biology

Citations in the corpus

Extracellular Vesicle Heterogeneity: Subpopulations, Isolation Techniques, and Diverse Functions in Cancer Progression (2018, methodology): “, two distinct particle populations were observed after dUC-isolated EXOs (110,000 × g pellets) from B16F10 melanoma cells were subjected to upward flotation in a sucrose density gradient (87).”
Obstacles and opportunities in the functional analysis of extracellular vesicle RNA – an ISEV position paper (2017, background): “[20] In a recent study, the copy number of a given”
Isolation of Extracellular Vesicles: General Methodologies and Latest Trends (2018, background): “Microvesicles (MVs) are membrane-covered vesicles of various shapes and a diameter of 50 to 1000 nm and more [16] and are formed by budding from the plasma membrane [13, 22].”