Extracellular membrane vesicles and nanotubes in Archaea

Junfeng Liu (1) , Nicolas Soler (2) , Aurore Gorlas (3) , Virginija Cvirkaite-Krupovic (1) , Mart Krupovic (1) , Patrick Forterre (3, 4)

1 Virologie des archées - Archaeal Virology
2 DynAMic - Dynamique des Génomes et Adaptation Microbienne
3 I2BC - Institut de Biologie Intégrative de la Cellule
4 Département de Microbiologie - Department of Microbiology

Membrane-bound extracellular vesicles (EVs) are secreted by cells from all three domains of life and their implication in various biological processes is increasingly recognized. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge on archaeal EVs and nanotubes, and emphasize their biological significance. In archaea, the EVs and nanopods have been largely studied in representative species from the phyla Crenarchaeota and Euryarchaeaota. The archaeal EVs have been linked to several physiological processes such as detoxification, biomineralization and transport of biological molecules, including chromosomal, viral or plasmid DNA, thereby taking part in genome evolution and adaptation through horizontal gene transfer. The biological significance of archaeal nanotubes is yet to be demonstrated, although they could participate in EVs biogenesis or exchange of cellular contents. We also discuss the biological mechanisms leading to EV/nanotube biogenesis in Archaea. It has been recently demonstrated that, similar to eukaryotes, EV budding in crenarchaea depends on the ESCRT machinery, whereas the mechanism of EV budding in euryarchaeal lineages, which lack the ESCRT-III homologs, remains unclear.

Keywords: Extracellular vesicles; nanotubes; archaea; vesiduction; extremophiles; DNA transfer

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Microbiology and Parasitology

Junfeng Liu, Nicolas Soler, Aurore Gorlas, Virginija Cvirkaite-Krupovic, Mart Krupovic, et al.. Extracellular membrane vesicles and nanotubes in Archaea. microLife, 2021, 2, pp.uqab007. ⟨10.1093/femsml/uqab007⟩. ⟨pasteur-03264764v2⟩