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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2019 Oct 19.
Published in final edited form as: Biochem Soc Trans. 2018 Oct 8;46(5):1137–1146. doi: 10.1042/BST20180523

Figure 3.

Figure 3.

A model showing how the cargo in exosomes can potentially change. MVBs are part of the endocytic pathway, and they undergo a maturation process that includes the sorting of membrane and cytosolic proteins by the ESCRT complex and HSC70 on the limiting membrane of MVBs. This results in the incorporation of cargo proteins into the lumen of nascent ILVs. Many of the MVBs are then trafficked in Rab5- and Rab7-dependent mechanisms to lysosomes, where they are degraded. However, some MVBs can also be routed to the plasma membrane by Rab27 and SYT7, and their contents (i.e. ILVs) released as exosomes. The content of exosomes generated by a cell can potentially change depending on which point during their maturation process the MVBs are trafficked to the plasma membrane, as depicted.