title: Keeping p53 in check: a high-stakes balancing act.
abstract: How do regulatory switches achieve high sensitivity within the noisy cellular milieu? Loewer et al. (2010) now use single-cell microscopy to demonstrate that alternative posttranslational modifications allow the tumor suppressor p53 to differentiate between benign breaks in DNA during the cell cycle and deleterious damage caused by mutagens.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Cell and Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6058, USA. bergers@upenn.edu
authors.forename: Shelley L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Berger