NLRC4 Deficiency Leads to Enhanced Phosphorylation of MLKL and Necroptosis

Hosts rely on the innate immune system to clear pathogens in response to infection. Pathogen-associated molecular patterns bind to innate immune receptors and engage activation of downstream signaling to initiate a host immune response to fight infection. A key component of this innate response is programmed cell death. Recent work has highlighted significant cross-talk and functional redundancy between cell death pathways, leading to the discovery of PANoptosis, an inflammatory programmed cell death pathway dependent on PANoptosomes, which are innate immune danger-sensing complexes that activate inflammatory cell death and contain caspases with or without inflammasome components and receptor interacting protein homotypic interaction motif–containing proteins. Although PANoptosis has been characterized in response to a growing number of pathogens, inflammatory diseases, and cancer, its role and the functional consequences of PANoptotic component modulation during NLR family CARD domain-containing protein 4 (NLRC4) activation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection remain unknown. In this study, we show that P. aeruginosa can induce PANoptosis in mouse bone marrow–derived macrophages (BMDMs). Only the combined deletion of caspase-1, -11, -8, and RIPK3 protected mouse BMDMs from cell death. Moreover, we showed that PANoptotic components act in a compensatory manner; in the absence of NAIP5 and NLRC4 during P. aeruginosa challenge, activation of caspase-1, -3, -7, and -8 was reduced, whereas alternative cell death molecules such as RIPK1 and MLKL were activated in mouse BMDMs. Taken together, these data highlight the extensive cross-talk between cell death signaling molecules and showcase the plasticity of the system.