CASP1 and silicosis: To explore this possibility, we used real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) to detect the relative expression of several essential genes in the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway including NLRP3, ASC, and Caspase-1 (Fig. 3c-e) and Western blots to determine the levels of protein accumulation (Fig. 3g, h) in lung tissue from late administration mouse models, which indicated that the strong activation of NLRP3 inflammasome was repressed by Tet in silicosis mice, although no significant change in ASC mRNA and protein levels was observed.