Poster Presentation International Plant Molecular Biology Conference 2024

Exosome isolation from ginseng and arabidopsis (#43)

Jinwoo Jang 1 , Geupil Jang 1
  1. School of Biological Sciences and Technology, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea

Exosomes, measuring between 50 and 150 nm in diameter, are nano-sized extracellular vesicles enveloped by a lipid bilayer membrane. Growing evidence suggests that exosomes play a significant role in facilitating the regulation of cell growth and defense mechanisms through the transfer of molecular constituents from the donor cell to the recipient cell. Recently, plant exosomes have received significant attention as a promising biomedical material due to their potential for medicinal and clinical utilization. Despite this potential, challenges remain, including the establishment of an optimized method for isolating plant exosomes with high purity. In this study, we first tested two methods to isolate exosomes from ginseng: ultracentrifugation, the most widely used method; and the ExoQuick system, a polymer-based exosome precipitation approach. We also designed and tested a third method in which we combined ultracentrifugation and ExoQuick methods. Nanoparticle tracking analysis for assessing the size distribution of isolated extracellular vesicles showed that the exosome isolation purity by ultracentrifugation and ExoQuick methods alone was approximately 35% and 60%, respectively. However, when both methods were combined, the exosome isolation purity significantly improved to approximately 85%, and the exosome isolation result of the model plant arabidopsis further supported this finding. Additionally, zeta potential analysis revealed that the combination method also improved the colloidal stability of exosomes isolated both from ginseng and arabidopsis. Collectively, these suggest that the combination method is widely applicable for isolating high-purity and high-stability exosomes from plants.