ISEV position paper: extracellular vesicle RNA analysis and bioinformatics

Andrew F Hill; D Michiel Pegtel; Ulrike Lambertz; Tommaso Leonardi; Lorraine O'Driscoll; Stefano Pluchino; Dmitry Ter-Ovanesyan; Esther N M Nolte-'t Hoen

doi:10.3402/jev.v2i0.22859

ISEV position paper: extracellular vesicle RNA analysis and bioinformatics

J Extracell Vesicles. 2013 Dec 23:2. doi: 10.3402/jev.v2i0.22859. eCollection 2013.

Authors

Andrew F Hill¹, D Michiel Pegtel², Ulrike Lambertz³, Tommaso Leonardi⁴, Lorraine O'Driscoll⁵, Stefano Pluchino⁶, Dmitry Ter-Ovanesyan⁷, Esther N M Nolte-'t Hoen⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
² Department of Pathology, VU University Medical Centre, Cancer Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
³ Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
⁴ Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John van Geest Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair and Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK ; EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK.
⁵ School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
⁶ Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John van Geest Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair and Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
⁷ Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁸ Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are the collective term for the various vesicles that are released by cells into the extracellular space. Such vesicles include exosomes and microvesicles, which vary by their size and/or protein and genetic cargo. With the discovery that EVs contain genetic material in the form of RNA (evRNA) has come the increased interest in these vesicles for their potential use as sources of disease biomarkers and potential therapeutic agents. Rapid developments in the availability of deep sequencing technologies have enabled the study of EV-related RNA in detail. In October 2012, the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) held a workshop on "evRNA analysis and bioinformatics." Here, we report the conclusions of one of the roundtable discussions where we discussed evRNA analysis technologies and provide some guidelines to researchers in the field to consider when performing such analysis.

Keywords: RNA; bioinformatics; deep sequencing; evRNA; extracellular vesicles.

Abstract

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