Karen Vousden: Getting the big picture on p53

p 53 is famous—or infamous—as a fulcrum in the development of cancer. As a transcription factor, it controls the expression of a bevy of genes that protect cells in times of stress or, when stresses exceed certain thresholds, sends them down the path to cellular suicide. Its mutation or loss is observed in many types of cancer. Karen Vousden has been studying p53 since the early stages of her career as an independent scientist. Her lab has investigated everything from the processes that regulate p53 stability (1, 2) to the genes whose expression is controlled by p53 (3, 4) and the functions of mutant versions of p53 that accumulate in cancer cells (5). We called her at her lab at Cancer Research UK's Beatson Institute in Glasgow, where she's now the Director, to fl esh out the details on p53 and to sketch the larger picture of her career. Where did you grow up? I grew up in Gravesend, an industrial town on the banks of the Thames in the southeast of England. Neither of my parents is an academic; my mother was a school dinner lady, and my father was a toolmaker in a factory. They always strongly supported me in my schoolwork but never really had any academic aspirations for me. Nonetheless, they are very happy about the way things worked out. When I was little, I wanted to be a teacher. Then, when I went to secondary school, I had some outstanding chemistry and biology teachers who encouraged an ambition to become a scientist. But when I was about 14, a career advisor visited the school. She asked me what I wanted to do, so I said, " I want to be a research scientist , " and she said, " Oh, that's much too diffi cult. Have you thought about working in a bank? " [Laughs] So in spite of this advice— Yeah, I stuck with it. In the end, I went to the University of London and studied biology. I started off in straight biology courses and then ended up graduating with a degree in microbiology and genetics. But I never really had a long-term plan. Now I occasionally get invited to talk to graduate students, and they want insights into the right steps and strategy for a career in science. But I always feel I have nothing to offer because I had no strategy—I …