Figure 1.

Extracellular vesicles (EV) and virus particles share similar vesicular budding process and composition, including proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. (A) Microvesicles bud off at the plasma membrane, similar to the canonical human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) budding process. Exosomes originate from inward budding of the late endosome into multivesicular body (MVB) and later release at the plasma membrane, similar to the canonical enveloped hepatitis A viruses (HAV) budding process. (B) Extracellular vesicles may carry makers like tetraspanins, esterases, Alix, and Tsg101 [1]. The encased nucleic acids are protected from nucleases. (C). A virus particle consists of an envelope, capsid, tegument, and viral genome.