The week of publications continues for the lab with a @currentbiology.bsky.social piece on ninj1 by @elliottbernard.bsky.social and @ehartenian.bsky.social check it out to have all your pressing ninj1 questions answered :)

www.cell.com/current-biol...

It’s DIB day! The annual conference for our department @dib-unil.bsky.social. Lovely day (and view!) at the Lausanne Olympic museum exchanging with our colleagues. Plus a stellar presentation on NINJ1 by our own @elliottbernard.bsky.social 🔬!

The second day of the @dib-unil.bsky.social #PRR symposium kicks off with more excellent talks including our own Jakub Began.

A big congratulations to Dr. Alexandra Boegli for very successfully defending her PhD on listeria activation of the elusive NLRP6! Very well deserved and very well celebrated! 🥳

Registration opens soon for the second Pattern Recognition receptor symposium in Lausanne Switzerland in October 2025. Check out the link for the great list of speakers.

wp.unil.ch/immunobiolog...

Congrats to lab member Elliott for winning the poster prize at the Swiss LS2 conference for his work on the activation mechanism of Ninj1 during cell death!! 🥳 @dib-unil.bsky.social @lifesciswitzerland.bsky.social

So, NLRP6 can initiate a canonical inflammasome and induces pyroptosis, establishing NLRP6 as a sensor for damage to the endolysosomal system.

Finally, sterile endolysosomal damage alone, using the lysosome rupturing compound LLOME, is sufficient to activate NLRP6.

On the bacterial side, bacterial PAMPs aren’t sufficient to activate NLRP6. However, cell to cell spread is important for activation as a mutant deficient for making actin tails is a worse activator of NLRP, as is the plcB mutant deficient in escape from a secondary vacuole.

By comparing NLRP6 and 3, they map the upstream region of the NACHT domain - the FISNA and its conserved poly basic motifs- as being important for receptor activation, but despite sequence similarities they show that each receptor is activated by distinct ligands.

Then they show that listeria based activation of NLRP6 in HIEC intestinal epithelial cells has all the hallmarks of canonical inflammasome activation including GSDMD cleavage.

First they show that WT listeria - but not the dhly mutant which doesn’t express the pore forming toxin Listeriolysin O that allows the bacteria to escape from endolysosomes - are sensed in a HEK reconstitution assay.

First real bluesky post 🥳 Did you know that NINJ1 exists as an autoinhibited dimer in the PM of cells? In a News & Views, @elliottbernard.bsky.social and Petr describe new results from Dixit & Deshpande, including a resting structure of NINJ1 with 3 helices! Check it out here: rdcu.be/d2nqH