Abstract
Pyroptosis is a highly regulated inflammatory form of cell death that plays a role in many different diseases, including cancer. Pyroptosis was initially described to be mediated by caspase-1, which is activated by innate immune signaling complexes called inflammasomes. Inflammasomes trigger caspase-dependent activation of the pore-forming protein, gasdermin D, and plasma membrane disruption. In this protocol, we describe a method to simultaneously detect two hallmarks of inflammasome-mediated pyroptosis. Using a fluorescently tagged inflammasome adaptor protein (ASC-Citrine) and membrane-impermeable nuclear dyes, we can track inflammasome formation and plasma membrane disruption over time in the same cell population.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Cookson BT, Brennan MA (2001) Pro-inflammatory programmed cell death [2]. Trends Microbiol 9:113–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0966-842x(00)01936-3
Fink SL, Cookson BT (2005) Apoptosis, pyroptosis, and necrosis: mechanistic description of dead and dying eukaryotic cells. Infect Immun 73:1907–1916. https://doi.org/10.1128/IAI.73.4.1907-1916.2005
Broz P, Dixit VM (2016) Inflammasomes: mechanism of assembly, regulation and signalling. Nat Rev Immunol 16:407–420
Zhao Y, Yang J, Shi J et al (2011) The NLRC4 inflammasome receptors for bacterial flagellin and type III secretion apparatus. Nature 477:596–602. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10510
Malik A, Kanneganti TD (2017) Inflammasome activation and assembly at a glance. J Cell Sci 130:3955–3963. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.207365
de Alba E (2019) Structure, interactions and self-assembly of ASC-dependent inflammasomes. Arch Biochem Biophys 670:15–31
Tzeng TC, Schattgen S, Monks B et al (2016) A fluorescent reporter mouse for Inflammasome assembly demonstrates an important role for cell-bound and free ASC specks during in vivo infection. Cell Rep 16:571–582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2016.06.011
Jorgensen I, Zhang Y, Krantz BA, Miao EA (2016) Pyroptosis triggers pore-induced intracellular traps (PITs) that capture bacteria and lead to their clearance by efferocytosis. J Exp Med 213:2113–2128. https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20151613
Davis MA, Fairgrieve MR, den Hartigh A et al (2019) Calpain drives pyroptotic vimentin cleavage, intermediate filament loss, and cell rupture that mediates immunostimulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 116:5061–5070. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1818598116
Bergsbaken T, Fink SL, den Hartigh AB et al (2011) Coordinated host responses during Pyroptosis: Caspase-1–dependent lysosome exocytosis and inflammatory cytokine maturation. J Immunol 187:2748–2754. https://doi.org/10.4049/jimmunol.1100477
Fink SL, Cookson BT (2006) Caspase-1-dependent pore formation during pyroptosis leads to osmotic lysis of infected host macrophages. Cell Microbiol 8:1812–1825. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1462-5822.2006.00751.x
Liu X, Zhang Z, Ruan J et al (2016) Inflammasome-activated gasdermin D causes pyroptosis by forming membrane pores. Nature 535:153–158. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18629
Shi J, Zhao Y, Wang K et al (2015) Cleavage of GSDMD by inflammatory caspases determines pyroptotic cell death. Nature 526:660–665. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15514
Evavold CL, Ruan J, Tan Y, et al. (2018) The pore-forming protein Gasdermin D regulates Interleukin-1 secretion from living macrophages. Immunity 48:35–44.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2017.11.013
Kovacs SB, Miao EA (2017) Gasdermins: effectors of Pyroptosis. Trends Cell Biol 27:673–684
Galluzzi L, Vitale I, Aaronson SA et al (2018) Molecular mechanisms of cell death: recommendations of the nomenclature committee on cell death 2018. Cell Death Differ 25:486–541
Wei Q, Mu K, Li T et al (2014) Deregulation of the NLRP3 inflammasome in hepatic parenchymal cells during liver cancer progression. Lab Investig 94:52–62. https://doi.org/10.1038/labinvest.2013.126
Gao J, Qiu X, Xi G et al (2018) Downregulation of GSDMD attenuates tumor proliferation via the intrinsic mitochondrial apoptotic pathway and inhibition of EGFR/Akt signaling and predicts a good prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer. Oncol Rep 40:1971–1984. https://doi.org/10.3892/or.2018.6634
Zhang Z, Zhang Y, Lieberman J (2021) Lighting a fire: can we harness pyroptosis to ignite antitumor immunity? Cancer Immunol Res 9:2–7. https://doi.org/10.1158/2326-6066.CIR-20-0525
Xia X, Wang X, Cheng Z et al (2019) The role of pyroptosis in cancer: pro-cancer or pro-“host”? Cell Death Dis 10:650. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41419-019-1883-8
Karki R, Kanneganti TD (2019) Diverging inflammasome signals in tumorigenesis and potential targeting. Nat Rev Cancer 19:197–214
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
den Hartigh, A.B., Fink, S.L. (2022). Simultaneous Detection of Inflammasome Activation and Membrane Damage During Pyroptosis. In: Barcenilla, H., Diaz, D. (eds) Apoptosis and Cancer. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2543. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2553-8_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2553-8_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-2552-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-2553-8
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols