The microbiota constitutes an important part of the holobiont in which extracellular vesicles (EVs) are key players in health, especially regarding inter- and intra-kingdom communications. Analysis of EVs from the red blood cell concentrates of healthy donors revealed variable amounts of OmpA and LPS in 12 of the 14 analyzed samples, providing indirect experimental evidence of the presence of microbiota EVs in human circulating blood in the absence of barrier disruption. To investigate the role of these microbiota EVs, we tracked the fusion of fluorescent Escherichia coli EVs with blood mononuclear cells and showed that, in the circulating blood, these EVs interacted almost exclusively with monocytes. This study demonstrates that bacterial EVs constitute critical elements of the host-microbiota cellular communication. The analysis of bacterial EVs should thus be systematically included in any characterization of human EVs.
Keywords: OmpA; extracellular vesicles (EVs); gut microbiota; lipopolysaccharide (LPS); membrane fusion; outer membrane vesicles (OMVs); red blood cell concentrates.