Ectosomes

What are ectosomes? Ectosomes are vesicles of various size (0.1–1mm in diameter) that bud directly from the plasma membrane and are shed to the extracellular space. At variance with living cells, ectosomes have on their surface the phospholipid phosphatidylserine. These vesicles were long considered to be artefacts, and then they were confused with exosomes — the vesicles discharged upon exocytosis of multivesicular bodies — and with cytoplasmic particles generated during apoptosis. Now, ectosomes attract great interest: of the hundreds of papers published so far on ectosomes, over 50% have appeared in just the last two years.