Taken together with previous studies which have demonstrated that IL-33 is also highly susceptible to processing and activation by allergen-associated proteases (9, 10) and a recent report which demonstrates that human and murine IL-36γ can be processed by Aspergillus fumigatus protease (29), this suggests that IL-1 family cytokines may have evolved to function as sentinels for aberrant protease activity that is typically associated with infection or tissue damage (reviewed in ref. 11). This evidence concerns the gene IL33 and infection.