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Cai et al. Extracell Vesicles Circ Nucleic Acids 2023;4:262-82 Extracellular Vesicles and
DOI: 10.20517/evcna.2023.10
Circulating Nucleic Acids

Review Open Access

Extracellular vesicles: cross-organismal RNA
trafficking in plants, microbes, and mammalian cells

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Qiang Cai , Lida Halilovic , Ting Shi , Angela Chen , Baoye He , Huaitong Wu , Hailing Jin 3
1
State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China.
2
Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, Wuhan 430072, Hubei, China.
3
Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, Center for Plant Cell Biology, Institute for Integrative Genome Biology,
University of California, Riverside, CA 92507, United States.
Correspondence to: Prof. Hailing Jin, Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, Center for Plant Cell Biology, Institute for
Integrative Genome Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92507, USA. E-mail: hailingj@ucr.edu; Prof. Qiang Cai, State
Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China. E-mail:
qiang.cai@whu.edu.cn
How to cite this article: Cai Q, Halilovic L, Shi T, Chen A, He B, Wu H, Jin H. Extracellular vesicles: cross-organismal RNA
trafficking in plants, microbes, and mammalian cells. Extracell Vesicles Circ Nucleic Acids 2023;4:262-82.
https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/evcna.2023.10
Received: 27 Jan 2023 Revised: 24 May 2023 Accepted: 26 May 2023 Published: 19 Jun 2023

Academic Editor: Yoke Peng Loh Copy Editor: Yanbing Bai Production Editor: Yanbing Bai

Abstract
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-enclosed nanometer-scale particles that transport biological materials
such as RNAs, proteins, and metabolites. EVs have been discovered in nearly all kingdoms of life as a form of
cellular communication across different cells and between interacting organisms. EV research has primarily
focused on EV-mediated intra-organismal transport in mammals, which has led to the characterization of a
plethora of EV contents from diverse cell types with distinct and impactful physiological effects. In contrast,
research into EV-mediated transport in plants has focused on inter-organismal interactions between plants and
interacting microbes. However, the overall molecular content and functions of plant and microbial EVs remain
largely unknown. Recent studies into the plant-pathogen interface have demonstrated that plants produce and
secrete EVs that transport small RNAs into pathogen cells to silence virulence-related genes. Plant-interacting
microbes such as bacteria and fungi also secrete EVs which transport proteins, metabolites, and potentially RNAs
into plant cells to enhance their virulence. This review will focus on recent advances in EV-mediated
communications in plant-pathogen interactions compared to the current state of knowledge of mammalian EV
capabilities and highlight the role of EVs in cross-kingdom RNA interference.

© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
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