Department of Biochemistry, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
J Extracell Vesicles. 2012 Apr 16;1. doi: 10.3402/jev.v1i0.18374. eCollection 2012.
Exosomes are a class of extracellular vesicles that are secreted by various cell types. Unlike other extracellular vesicles (ectosomes and apoptotic blebs), exosomes are of endocytic origin. The roles of exosomes in vaccine/drug delivery, intercellular communication and as a possible source of disease biomarkers have sparked immense interest in them, resulting in a plethora of studies. Whilst multidimensional datasets are continuously generated, it is difficult to harness the true potential of the data until they are compiled and made accessible to the biomedical researchers. Here, we describe ExoCarta (http://www.exocarta.org), a manually curated database of exosomal proteins, RNA and lipids. Datasets currently present in ExoCarta are integrated from both published and unpublished exosomal studies. Since its launch in 2009, ExoCarta has been accessed by more than 16,000 unique users. In this article, we discuss the utility of ExoCarta for exosomal research and urge biomedical researchers in the field to deposit their datasets directly to ExoCarta.
外泌体是一类由各种细胞类型分泌的细胞外囊泡。与其他细胞外囊泡（ectosomes 和凋亡小泡）不同，外泌体起源于内体。外泌体在疫苗/药物传递、细胞间通讯以及作为疾病生物标志物的可能来源方面的作用引起了人们的极大兴趣，导致了大量的研究。虽然不断生成多维数据集，但在将数据编译并提供给生物医学研究人员之前，很难充分利用其真正的潜力。在这里，我们描述了 ExoCarta（http://www.exocarta.org），这是一个经过人工整理的外泌体蛋白、RNA 和脂质数据库。ExoCarta 中目前存在的数据集是从已发表和未发表的外泌体研究中整合而来的。自 2009 年推出以来，已有超过 16000 个独特的用户访问过 ExoCarta。在本文中，我们讨论了 ExoCarta 在外泌体研究中的实用性，并敦促该领域的生物医学研究人员将他们的数据集直接存入 ExoCarta。
