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EXOSOMES: IT'S NOT THE SIZE OF THE PACKAGE THAT MATTERS, BUT WHAT A CELL CAN DO WITH IT
Scientists have known for decades that cells readily communicate with each other. To send signals close by, a communicative cell can nestle up to a neighbor that has the lock into which its key fits (yes that is a euphemism - a euphemism for ligand-receptor binding. To talk to other cells they aren’t directly touching, cells can release substances such as hormones). These substances enter the circulatory system and eventually are sensed by other groups of cells that can respond to that specific signal. We pretty much thought those were the only two broad ways that cells could talk to each other by directly touching or by releasing signaling molecules. However, in the 80s, a group of scientists first described tiny spheres, or vesicles, inside cells in a laboratory[1]. They noticed that these vesicles were eventually expelled into the cell…
INVASION OF THE CELL SNATCHERS
How can cells that are very far apart in the body influence each other? The cells in our multicellular body can control each other from a distance. This article is about a novel form of cell-to-cell communication that involves sending out little packets of information that can ‘reprogram’ the recipient cell, much like the invasion of a body by an alien force. This type of communication, using structures called exosomes,control both communication during health, but also during disease.