Small but mighty: uncovering the bioactivity of extracellular vesicles

Inna Nikonorova uncovers some of the mystery around extracellular vesicles (EVs), nano-sized bubbles that are an ancient type of cell communication, which were once thought to just be cellular debris. Nikonorova (left) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at The Barr Lab (Rutgers University; NJ, USA) who studies ancient and evolutionarily conserved signaling mechanisms that occur via EVs. Previously, Nikonorova studied protein synthesis regulation in the context of the whole organism using in vivo mouse models, which brought about a desire to conduct more powerful functional studies using an amenable organism. This led her to use the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C....