Extracellular vesicles for shuttling small RNAs and proteins

Aparna Pandey, IILM Academy of Higher learning and Education, Greater Noida

Extracellular vesicles are small sheaths particles derived from various cell types. Extracellular vesicles are lipid bilayer-enclosed, cytosol-containing spheres that are liberated by all eukaryotes and prokaryotic cells into the extracellular environment. Small RNAs plays an important role in different cellular processes like differentiation in cells, growth, proliferation, apoptosis(the death of cells as a normal and controlled part of a development of an organism), metabolism, and defence.

Small RNAs and mediated RNA interference is a conserved regulatory mechanism for gene expression throughout their domain Eukarya. Extracellular Vesicles have well characterized in animal cells and can be isolated from diverse body fluids or cell culture media. Pathogens and parasites transport small RNAs into host cells during infection and silence host defence genes to suppress immunity, whereas the host can also deliver their sRNAs into interacting microbes or parasites to suppress infection. The discovery of the pivotal role of small RNAs and extracellular vesicles in cross-species and cross-kingdom communication offers contemporary tools for pathogens and pest control in agriculture and biomedicine. Recent studies of different plant and animal hosts and their interacting organisms have unveiled extracellular vesicles as a vehicle of small RNAs exchange in cross-species and cross-kingdom RNAi

Extracellular Vesicles in animal-parasite interactions:-

In mammals, RNA s circulating through body fluids are often encapsulated in extracellular vesicles. In mammalian systems, multiple classes of extracellular vesicles have been showing to carry small RNA s. It is not surprising that pathogens and pests would evolve to exploit or target these natural cell-to-cell communication pathways. In mammalian systems, EVs have been shown to transport small RNA s between cells within the organisms, such as parasites and pathogens.

RNA and EVs vesicles based innovative tools for control of disease:-

We are in urgent need of contemporary, durable and eco-friendly fungicides and antimicrobial drugs to avoid a global sag in our ability to control pathogen infections in both plants and animals, including humans. One direct application of cross-kingdom RNA interface is HIGS, a technology in which transgenic plants express ds RNA that target pathogen or insect asperity-related genes to encounter plant disease.

Conclusion:-

The discovery of cross-species and cross-linked RNA interference and fungal RNA uptake has to motivate scientist to design a novel disease control approach against pathogens and pests in agriculture.

Also read: Amazon hydropower plant causes global warming

Source:

1. Cai Q, He B, Weiberg A, Buck AH, Jin H. Small RNAs and extracellular vesicles: New mechanisms of cross-species communication and innovative tools for disease control. PLoS Pathog. 2019 Dec 30;15(12):e1008090. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008090. PMID: 31887135; PMCID: PMC6936782.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6936782/
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