A VITAL gene that defends us against cancer has been found in one of the simplest of animals – placozoans. The finding shows that p53, sometimes described as the “guardian of the genome”, has been around for over 1 billion years.
Placozoans’ millimetre-long bodies are just three cells thick and have no muscles, nervous system or organs. Yet they have a version of p53 that is strikingly similar to ours, David Lane, of Cancer Research UK, reports in research to be published in Cell Cycle.
In humans, the protein it codes for, p53, detects and deals with damaged DNA that…
