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NLRP3 Inflammasome Assembly
This image highlights the core research of the Wu laboratory of mechanistic immunology at Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. The Wu lab studies the structural biology of inflammasomes, signaling proteins key to the innate immune response, and wanted to have an image that highlighted both the NLRP3 inflammasome structures that they have determined and some of the related biology. The subunits of NLRP3 are shown assembling from inactive monomers (left) to the active, 11-fold symmetric signaling disk (right). The transport of the subunits to this cell region where assembly takes place is also represented by the NLRP3-filled vesicle in the top left being transported by a dynein motor on a microtubule.