Adipocyte-Derived Extracellular Vesicles: State of the Art

Figures

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  Figure 1. Extracellular vesicle biogenesis, secretion and interaction with recipient cells. Two subclasses of extracellular vesicles (EV) are released from mammalian cells and are mainly distinguished based on their sizes. Large EVs (lEV) can bud from the plasma membrane. They are also referred to as microvesicles. Small EVs are derived from the formation of intraluminal vesicles (ILVs) within the lumen of the multivesicular body (MVB). MVB can fuse with the plasma membrane to release ILVs, which are thus called exosomes. EVs participate in intercellular communication through EV-based exchanges of proteins, lipids and genetic material between cells. The fate of EVs in recipient cells includes membrane fusion, ligand binding or endocytosis mechanisms.

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  Figure 2. Cellular EV-based cross-talks between adipose tissue modulate fat metabolism by autocrine action. EV-based dialog within white adipose tissue (WAT) has been evidenced between the different fat cell types as illustrated between adipocytes themselves, or between stem cells/immune cells and endothelial cells and between immune cells and adipocytes. All these exchanges result in modulating cell recipients’ metabolic responses and participate in maintaining fat homeostasis. The references of the publications cited as examples are given in brackets.

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  Figure 3. Adipocytes export a specific subpopulation of proteins into adipocyte-derived extracellular vesicles (AdEVs). (a) Significant GO biological functions enriched in proteins released in the conditioned medium from human differentiated adipocytes, either packed inside small extracellular vesicles or being released under a vesicle-free form. Proteomic data are from [15]. (b) Significant GO biological functions enriched in small EV (sEV) protein subsets released from human adipocytes vs. those released from human myotubes. Proteomic data are from [15] and [45]. Only functions containing more than 50 genes are presented. ECM, extracellular matrix; ER, endoplasmic reticulum. For (a) and (b), the significantly enriched pathways were retrieved using PANTHER version 11 [46].

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  Figure 4. Significant enrichment analyses were performed on the 65 proteins commonly found in AdEVs released from obese mice adipose tissue based on proteomic data from [35,52,53] vs. the rest of the genome (PANTHER version 11). Only significant functions in each pathway are shown. The list of 65 proteins is available in Table 1.