Bacterial extracellular vesicles – a new way to decipher host-microbiota communications in inflammatory dermatoses

Bacterial Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) are bilayered lipid membrane structures, bearing integral proteins and able to carry diverse cargo outside the cell to distant sites. In microorganisms, EVs carry several types of molecules: proteins, glycoproteins, mRNAs, and small RNA species, as mammalian EVs do, but also carbohydrates. Studying EVs opens a whole new world of possibilities to better understand the interplay between host and bacteria crosstalks, although there are still many questions to be answered in the field, especially when it comes to microbiota-derived EVs. Researchers from the University of Nantes summarize and analyze the current literature about bacterial EVs and possible clinical applications, through answering three main questions: (i) What are bacterial EVs ; (ii) What are EVs impacts on skin inflammatory diseases physiopathology ; (iii) What are the possible and expected clinical applications of EVs to treat inflammatory skin diseases.