UC Berkeley

Pathogen specificity in innate immunityThe inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes involved in innate immunity, and induce an immune response to pathogenic microbes by activating the caspase 1 protease. Two groups now report that the intracellular receptors known as NAIPs (NLR family, apoptosis inhibitory proteins), previously thought to have an auxiliary role in recognizing microbial proteins, are in fact central to the process. Eric Kofoed and Russell Vance, and Feng Shao and colleagues, show that different members of the NAIP family bind to different bacterial ligands, including bacterial flagellin and a conserved bacterial type III secretion system rod protein.