title: Extracellular RNAs: A Secret Arm of Immune System Regulation.
abstract: The immune system has evolved to protect multicellular organisms from the attack of a variety of pathogens. To exert this function efficiently, the system has developed the capacity to coordinate the function of different cell types and the ability to down-modulate the response when the foreign attack is over. For decades, immunologists believed that these two characteristics were primarily related to cytokine/chemokine-based communication and cell-to-cell direct contact. More recently, it has been shown that immune cells also communicate by transferring regulatory RNAs, microRNAs in particular, from one cell to the other. Several studies have suggested a functional role of extracellular regulatory RNAs in cell-to-cell communication in different cellular contexts. This minireview focuses on the potential role of extracellular RNA transfer in the regulation of adaptive immune response, also contextualizing it in a broader field of what is known of cell-free RNAs in communication among different organisms in the evolutionary scale.
authors.affiliation: From the IRCCS MultiMedica, 20138 Milan, paola.decandia@multimedica.it.
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: de Candia
authors.affiliation: the Laboratorio di Immunologia, Istituto di Endocrinologia e Oncologia Sperimentale, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IEOS-CNR), 80131 Napoli and Unità di NeuroImmunologia, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, 00142 Roma.
authors.forename: Veronica
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: De Rosa
authors.affiliation: the ZooPlantLab, Dipartimento di Biotecnologie e Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milano, and.
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Casiraghi
authors.affiliation: the Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Biotecnologie Mediche, Università di Napoli "Federico II", 80131 Napoli, Italy giuseppe.matarese@unina.it.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Matarese
mesh_terms: D056704:Adaptive Immunity / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002450:Cell Communication / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs
keywords: Cell-free RNAs; RNA; T cells; Treg cells; cellular immune response; extracellular vesicles; immune system; lymphocyte; nucleic acid