Single-vesicle imaging and co-localization analysis for tetraspanin profiling of individual extracellular vesicles.

ABSTRACT: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted nano-sized vesicles that contain cellular proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids. Although EVs are expected to be biologically diverse, current analyses cannot adequately characterize this diversity because most are ensemble methods that inevitably average out information from diverse EVs. Here we describe a single vesicle analysis, which directly visualizes marker expressions of individual EVs using a total internal-reflection microscopy and analyzes their co-localization to investigate EV subpopulations. The single-vesicle imaging and co-localization analysis successfully illustrated the diversity of EVs and revealed distinct patterns of tetraspanin expressions. Application of the analysis demonstrated similarities and dissimilarities between the EV

SUBMITTER: Han C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7797949 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature