Infographic: Plants Deploy Exosomes to Stop Alien Invaders

A growing branch of research on how plants use exosomes to interact with their environment is opening up a new field of plant biology.

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As fungal pathogens sink their feeding apparatuses into host cells, plants can fight back by shooting out vesicles packed with defensive molecules.

When identifying vesicles thought to be exosomes, plant biologists look for a number of hallmark traits.

Size: 30 to 150 nanometers in diameter

Molecular markers: Membrane trafficking proteins and proteins derived from the trans-golgi network (TGN) and the multivesicular bod­y (MVB)

Examples of known cargo:

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