Table 1.

Characteristics of the extracellular vesicles.

	Microvesicles	Exosomes	Apoptotic bodies	References
Size (nm)	100–1000	30–200	1000–5000	(Akers et al., 2013, van Niel et al., 2018, Al-Nedawi et al., 2009, Théry et al., 2009, Minciacchi et al., 2015)
Morphological appearance	Various shapes	Cup shaped	heterogeneous	(Mathivanan et al., 2010, Théry et al., 2009, Skog et al., 2008)
Protein components	Death receptors such as CD40 ligand, Cell adhesion (integrins, selectins),	Tetraspanins (CD63, CD9 CD82, CD81), Multivesicular bodies (TSG101, ALIX)	Transcription factors and histones	(Al-Nedawi et al., 2009)
Lipid composition	Cholesterol, High phosphatidylserine exposure	Cholesterol, sphingomyelin, lipid rafts, ceramide, low phosphatidylserine exposure	Enriched in Phosphatidylserine	(György et al., 2011, Baj-Krzyworzeka et al., 2007, Jang et al., 2015)
Mode of the extracellular release process	Cellular/ constitutive activation	Cellular/ constitutive activation	Cellular/ constitutive activation	(Al-Nedawi et al., 2009)
Markers	Selectin, flittilin-2, metalloprotease surface phosphatidylserine, glycophorin, Integrin (B1), MMP, CD34, CD40, CD45	Rab5a/b, CD63, Alix, CD81, CD82, CD9, HSP70, HSP90, flottlin, GTPasestetraspanins, TSG101, ESCRT, and MHC	Histones, calnexin, Surface phosphatidylserinehistones, annexin V, C3b, cytochrome C, and TSP	(Al-Nedawi et al., 2009, Mathivanan et al., 2010, Caby et al., 2005, Vojtech et al., 2014, Zlotogorski-Hurvitz et al., 2015)
Biogenesis	By outward budding of the plasma membrane	Upon fusion of multi-vesicular bodies within endosomal networks	Produced by cells going through apoptosis	(Caby et al., 2005, Yuan et al., 2018, Dixon et al., 2018)

Abbreviations: TSG101: tumor susceptibility gene 101; ESCRT: The endosomal sorting complexes required for transport; HSP: heat shock protein; miRNA: microRNA; MMP: matrix metalloproteinase;