The silencer of death domains (SODD) has been proposed to prevent constitutive signaling of tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1) in the absence of ligand. Besides TNFR1, death receptor 3 (DR3), Hsp70/Hsc70, and Bcl-2 have been characterized as binding partners of SODD. In order to investigate the in vivo role of SODD, we generated mice congenitally deficient in expression of the sodd gene. No spontaneous inflammatory infiltrations were observed in any organ of these mice. Consistent with this finding, in the absence of SODD no alteration in the activation patterns of nuclear factor B (NF-B), stress kinases, or ERK1 or -2 was observed after stimulation with tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Activation of NF-B by DR3 was also unchanged. The extents of DR3-and TNF-induced apoptosis were comparable in gene-deficient and wild-type cells. Protection of cells against heat shock as mediated by the Hsp70 system and against staurosporine-induced apoptosis was independent of SODD. Furthermore, resistance to high-dose lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injections, LPS-D-GalN injections, and infection with listeriae was similar in wild-type and gene-deficient mice. In conclusion, our data do not support the concept of a unique, nonredundant role of SODD for the functions of TNFR1, Hsp70, and DR3.In a yeast-two-hybrid screen, the silencer of death domains (SODD) was isolated as the binding partner of death receptor 3 (DR3), a member of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) family which has been described as playing a role in negative selection during thymocyte development (20, 47). The cytoplasmic death domain of DR3 was identified as the domain interacting with SODD. The death domain of DR3 shares a high degree of homology with its counterpart in TNFR1, and not surprisingly, SODD was also found to bind to the death domain of TNFR1, although it did not bind to the death domains of other death receptor family members such as Fas, DR4, and DR5. Likewise, SODD was unable to interact with TNFR2 (20). SODD is a 457-amino-acid (aa) cytosolic protein that lacks death domains. Overexpression of SODD and RNA antisense experiments suggested a role for SODD in preventing ligand-independent TNFR1 signaling (20). According to the proposed model, SODD associates with TNFR1 in the absence of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and thereby keeps the receptor molecules in a conformation that inhibits spontaneous signaling. In the presence of TNF, SODD dissociates, and the receptor-triggered signaling cascades can be initiated by binding of TRADD and other downstream signaling proteins, leading to activation of NF-B and stress kinases or to apoptosis. In vivo, uncontrolled signaling of TNFR1 can lead to hyperinflammation or to cell death by apoptosis (23,24). Recently, it has been shown that (i) TNFR1 is present in aggregates in ATP-depleted cells, (ii) SODD is able to disassemble TNFR1 aggregates only in the presence of ATP, and (iii)