Visualizing extracellular vesicle biogenesis in gram-positive bacteria using super-resolution microscopy

BACKGROUND: Recently, bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been considered to play crucial roles in various biological processes and have great potential for developing cancer therapeutics and biomedicine. However, studies on bacterial EVs have mainly focused on outer membrane vesicles released from gram-negative bacteria since the outermost peptidoglycan layer in gram-positive bacteria is thought to preclude the release of EVs as a physical barrier. RESULTS: Here, we examined the ultrastructural organization of the EV produced by gram-positive bacteria using super-resolution stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) at the nanoscale, which has not been resolved using conventional microscopy. Based on the super-resolution images of EVs, we propose three major mechanisms of EV biogenesis, i.e., membrane blebbing (mechanisms 1 and 2) or explosive cell lysis (mechanism 3), which are different from the mechanisms in gram-negative bacteria, despite some similarities. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the significant role of cell wall degradation in regulating various mechanisms of EV biogenesis and call for a reassessment of previously unresolved EV biogenesis in gram-positive bacteria. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-022-01472-3.