BACKGROUND: Activation and signal transduction in the Nucleotide binding, leucine-rich repeat containing receptor (NLR) family needs to be tightly regulated in order to control the inflammatory response to exogenous and endogenous danger signals. Phosphorylation is a common cellular mechanism of regulation that has recently been shown to be important in signalling in another family of cytoplasmic pattern recognition receptors, the RIG-I like receptors. In addition, single nucleotide polymorphisms can alter receptor activity, potentially leading to dysfunction and/or a predisposition to inflammatory barrier diseases. FINDINGS: We have computationally analysed the N-terminus of NOD1 and found seven theoretical phosphorylation sites in, or immediately before, the NOD1 Caspase Activation Domain (CARD). Two of these, serine 7 and tyrosine 49 are also found as rare polymorphisms in the African-American population and European-American populations respectively. Mutating serine 7 to either an aspartic acid or an asparagine to mimic the potential impact of phosphorylation or the polymorphism respectively did not affect the response of NOD1 to ligand-mediated NF