Shigella shuts down the pyrop-technic show

Shigella is a highly infectious human pathogen, yet mice are naturally resistant to infection. In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Luchetti et al. (2021) discuss this species specificity, demonstrating that Shigella directly targets the pore-forming protein Gasdermin D for degradation, thus preventing pyroptosis to enable infection of human cells.