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editorial

. 2018 Oct 28;24(40):4519–4526. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i40.4519

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©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.

This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial.

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Mechanisms of formation extracellular vesicles and composition. The early endosome is generated by invagination of the plasma membrane. The consequent fusion of endocytic vesicles mediated by the endosomal sorting complex responsible for transport (ESCRTs), formed multivesicular bodies (MVBs). MVBs can be degraded in the lysosome or released the intraluminal vesicles known as exosomes by the fusion of MVBs to the plasma membrane mediated by Rab GTPases. Microvesicles are generated by outward budding from the plasmatic membrane. Apoptotic bodies are generated during programmed cell death or apoptosis. The composition of extracellular vesicles (EVs) includes proteins (tetraspanins, receptors including epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), adhesion proteins, transporters and channels, vesicle trafficking-related proteins, cytoskeleton proteins and cytosolic proteins), lipids (sphingomyelin, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylserine) and nucleic acids (messenger RNA (mRNA), microRNA (miRNA), ribosomal RNA (rRNA), transfer RNA (tRNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)). ESCRTs: Endosomal sorting complex responsible for transport; MVBs: Multivesicular bodies; EVs: Extracellular vesicles; EGFR: Epidermal growth factor receptor; mRNA: Messenger RNA; miRNA: MicroRNA; rRNA: Ribosomal RNA; tRNA: Transfer RNA; mtDNA: Mitochondrial DNA.