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Nature 427, 110-111 (8 January 2004) | doi:10.1038/427110a

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Cancer: Guarding the guardian?

Henning F. Horn1 & Karen H. Vousden1

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The diversity of cellular stresses that activate the 'guardian of the genome' — p53 — begs the question of how these signals all converge on one protein. Perhaps the key to this integration is the nucleolus.

If there is beauty in simplicity then the p53 protein is unlikely to win any contests. As one of our key defences against cancer, p53 lies at the heart of a massive research effort that has generated an avalanche of papers.

  1. Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Switchback Road, Glasgow G61 1BD, UK.

Correspondence to: Karen H. Vousden1 Email: k.vousden@beatson.gla.ac.uk