IL18 and infection: To investigate whether the NLRP7 inflammasome plays a role in the production of TNF-α and CCL3 besides IL-1β and IL-18, we silenced NLRP7 or ASC in THP-1 macrophages prior to infection, which significantly attenuated M. bovis-induced upregulation of TNF-α, CCL3 and IL-1β at the mRNA level (Fig 5A–5C).