The evolutionary conflict between bacteria and phages has driven the emergence of diverse immune defense systems. While bacterial immunity was traditionally thought to be limited to restriction-modification and CRISPR-Cas systems, recent discoveries have uncovered a vast repertoire of novel antiviral mechanisms. Strikingly, several bacterial defense systems were found to have direct homologs in eukaryotic innate immunity, challenging the notion that immune innovations arose exclusively in metazoans. One striking example is gasdermin, a key executor of inflammatory cell death called pyroptosis in humans, which we recently found in bacteria, where it mediates phage defense through pore-forming cell death. This discovery reshapes our understanding of pyroptosis evolution, yet fundamental questions remain unanswered: Do bacterial gasdermins facilitate the release of cytokine-like molecules, and can their activity influence neighboring cells? This research aims to unravel these mechanisms, leveraging bacterial models to uncover conserved immune strategies across the tree of life.