Recently, Zhou Rongbin and Jiang Wei, professors of the Department of Life and Medical Sciences of the University of Science and Technology of China, the Key Laboratory of Natural Immunology and Chronic Diseases of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Center of Hefei Microscale Material Science, were invited to present in the Trends in Biochemical Sciences of Cell. A review article entitled Control of Inflammasome Activation by Phosphorylation was published, which systematically summarizes and discusses the role and mechanism of phosphorylation modification in the activation and regulation of inflammatory bodies.

 

 

The inflammasome is a multiprotein complex composed of the intracellular innate immune receptor, the adaptor protein ASC and the protease caspase-1 (cysteine-aspartic protease 1), which is capable of inducing the maturation and secretion of the pro-inflammatory factors IL-1b (interleukin 1b) and IL-18 (interleukin 18), thereby promoting the occurrence of an inflammatory reaction. Inflammasome can be infected by pathogenic microorganisms or activated by “dangerous signals” such as hyperglycemia, saturated fatty acids, cholesterol crystals, uric acid crystals, and β-amyloid, so the innate immune response mediated by the inflammatory body plays an important role not only in the anti-infective immune response, but also in the development of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, gout, neurodegenerative diseases, and multiple sclerosis. Therefore, how the inflammasomes activate and assemble and how they are regulated is a scientific issue that is of great concern to the immunology community. This paper summarizes and prospects the role and mechanism of phosphorylation in the activation or regulation of various inflammasomes, and explores the possibility of targeting related kinases to interfere with inflammasome-driven diseases.

 

Zhou Rongbin and Jiang Wei’s research team are dedicated to exploring the molecular mechanisms and disease intervention strategies of the immune system to identify “danger signals”. In recent years, a series of important work has been carried out in the activation, regulation of NLRP3 inflammatory bodies and the design of small molecule drugs targeting NLRP3, which has promoted the development of this field.

 

 

Reference

Tao Gong, Wei Jiang, Rongbin Zhou. Control of Inflammasome Activation by Phosphorylation. Trends in Biochemical Sciences. VOLUME 43, ISSUE 9, P685-699, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2018.06.008