Tetherin is an exosomal tether.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27657169.
- Also identified by DOI 10.7554/eLife.17180 and PMC identifier 5033606.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that are released when endosomes fuse with the plasma membrane. They have been implicated in various functions in both health and disease, including intercellular communication, antigen presentation, prion transmission, and tumour cell metastasis. Here we show that inactivating the vacuolar ATPase in HeLa cells causes a dramatic increase in the production of exosomes, which display endocytosed tracers, cholesterol, and CD63. The exosomes remain clustered on the cell surface, similar to retroviruses, which are attached to the plasma membrane by tetherin. To determine whether tetherin also attaches exosomes, we knocked it out and found a 4-fold reduction in plasma membrane-associated exosomes, with a concomitant increase in exosomes discharged into the medium. This phenotype could be rescued by wild-type tetherin but not tetherin lacking its GPI anchor. We propose that tetherin may play a key role in exosome fate, determining whether they participate in long-range or short-range interactions.