Vesicle Celebrities
Large Investments in Small Packages
Picture This
EV Trivial Pursuit
I like Big Buds
100
Leading the charge at the EV Center, our fearless leader is here to back your research—whether it’s through equipment, scholarships, or seminars with top EV experts
Who is Alissa Weaver?
100
This light-scattering technique tracks Brownian motion to measure and count nanoparticles.
What is nanoparticle tracking analysis?
100
Hardin, Heuser and Stahl first described release of exosomes from this endosome-derived organelle.
What is the multivesicular body?
100
Ectosomes form by budding from this excapsulating organelle.
What is the plasma membrane?
100
These large EVs are released from cells undergoing programmed cell death.
What are apoptotic bodies?
200
This diminutive dynamo won the 2025 ISEV Special Achievement Award for her pioneering work showing that large oncosome mediate prostate cancer progression.
Who is Dolores Di Vizio?
200
EVs are part of the cellular secretome in this liquid sample harvested from cultured cells.
What is conditioned media?
200
This family of EV marker proteins can induce membrane curvature through conformational changes.
What are Tetraspanins?
200
These submicroscopic infectious agents hijack EV biogenesis pathways to evade the host immune response.
What are viruses?
200
With diameters ranging from 10 to 20 microns, these bulging, blubbery EV blobs can contain whole MVBs and both take up and release other EVs
What are Blebbisomes?
300
In 1983, her discovery of vesicles released from reticulocytes launched the field of EV research.
Who is Rose Johnstone?
300
These 3D perfusion devices for cell culture outperform traditional flasks for large-scale EV production.
What are bioreactors?
300
You can take pictures like this of cargoes on individual EVs using this piece of EV Center equipment
What is the ONI Nanoimager?
300
Circumventing the accumulation of EVs in this organ is a major challenge for EV therapeutics
What is the liver?
300
These uncommonly large EVs are associated with a highly metastatic “amoeboid” tumor cell phenotype.
What are large oncosomes?
400
A founding member of ISEV, he launched #EVClub as a small journal club at Johns Hopkins and grew it into a global virtual forum for EV-related scientific exchange
Who is Ken Witwer?
400
This user guide to EV studies was first published in 2014, and updated in 2018 and 2023.
What is MISEV (Minimal Information for Studies of Extracellular Vesicles)?
400
This electron micrograph depicts the cup-like shape of these endosomally-derived small EVs.
What are exosomes?
400
This sticky substance is a major protein component of blood and is a common hitchhiker on plasma-derived EVs.
What is albumin?
400
Ectosome budding requires molecular rearrangements of the plasma membrane and this underlying structural network.
What is the actin cytoskeleton?
500
This pioneer of EV research discovered exosomal RNA transfer in 2007, helped to found ISEV, and served as Editor-In-Chief of JEV for the past 6 years
Who is Jan Lötvall?
500
Not the Commodores’ sports conference, but an EV isolation method that separates particles through a column of porous beads.
What is SEC/size exclusion chromatography?
500
These small but mighty nucleic acids can hitch a ride in EVs to alter gene expression in far-off recipient cells
What are miRNA?
500
Double trouble at the membrane, this pair of small GTPase proteins help vesicles dock and release
What are Rab27a and Rab27b?
500
Greater exposure of this lipid on the outer membrane leaflet is one of the main features of ectosomes
What is phosphatidylserine?