Fig. 3

Immune-related functions are specifically associated with nasal exosomal. GO Term Finder was used to determine the most enriched cellular components (a) and biological processes (b) in the nasal exosomal proteome of healthy subjects, compared to the genome frequency. The 10 most enriched terms (based on P value) in each category are displayed. c IPA was used to determine the most associated biological functions with the nasal exosomal proteome. The 10 most associated biological functions (based on P value) are displayed. d The proteomes of nine previously published exosomal studies were analysed with IPA to determine the specificity of the functions associated with the nasal exosomal proteome. The top 10 ranked functions associated with nasal lavage exosomes were compared to the rank attained in the other exosomal proteomes. Numbers represent the rank (1–10) for a particular function within each exosomal proteome. The nine exosomal proteomes used for the comparison were derived from; saliva [19], trabecular meshwork (TM) cells from the eye [23], parotid saliva [18], tracheobronchial ciliated epithelial cells [24], semen [16], urine [20–22], breast milk [15] and plasma [17]