Overview

• The Halfmann lab at the Stowers Institute reports in eLife that innate immune death‑fold proteins can exist in a supersaturated, energy‑loaded state that enables rapid assembly during infection.
• Screening more than 100 human proteins in yeast, the team identified several types prone to forming stable, crystal‑like assemblies without a pathogen present.
• The study describes how these assemblies activate pathways leading to pyroptosis, an inflammatory form of cell death that helps contain microbes.
• Analyses suggest some immune cells, including macrophages, may carry these proteins at levels where rare spontaneous assemblies could occur over a cell’s lifetime.
• The authors propose that such stochastic events may contribute to age‑related chronic inflammation and note that dampening this process could raise infection risk, underscoring the preliminary, nonclinical nature of the findings.