Hello all,
I am designing an experiment to ectopically express caspase-1 and other components of the inflammasome to measure Il1b cleavage and release. However, I came upon this nice paper describing caspase-1 induced pyroptosis, and it does not require cleavage. So, pro-caspase-1 expression alone can lead to cell death. (Article Differential Requirement for Caspase-1 Autoproteolysis in Pa...
)I am wondering if ectopic expression of pro-caspase-1 in my HEK293T cells will lead to cell death (specifically casp1-mediated pyroptosis). I also noticed previous groups that did similar experiment limit the amount of casp1 expression, but no one explained why. However, I am guessing that it will not induce cell death because gasdermin D (GSDMD) is not intrinsically expressed in 293T as well. Please let me know if you think it can still induce cell death, and how?
I think this paper will be very helpful to try and predict: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09753-2
I'm pretty sure there would be no specific pyroptosis without GsdmD, but it is possible to get late apoptosis.