Physiological roles of EVs
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play an important role in intercellular communication in and between different tissues of an organism [1, 2]. EVs include exosomes and microvesicles. Exosomes are membrane vesicles measuring 60-150 nm that are released into the extracellular space by multivesicular bodies (MVB) after fusion with the plasma membrane. In contrast, microvesicles (ectosomes) budd from the plasma membrane. Both vesicular entities are loaded in different ways in the cell and thus probably have different biological functions. EVs carry complex biological information consisting of DNA, RNA, proteins and lipids that can alter the phenotype of the recipient cell at several levels. The recipient cells can be affected via direct receptor binding, the fusion of their membrane with the EVs membrane and then the release of their encapsulated molecules (transcription factors, oncogenes, miRNA (miR) and long non-coding RNA) [1, 2] [Figure1].
