FOCAL POINT Sarah Thompson and Duane Compton investigated why, unlike tumor cells, normal cells don't proliferate once they contain an abnormal number of chromosomes. The researchers introduced a single fluorescent mark into the genome of a diploid cell line, induced missegregation, and identified the cells that incorrectly carried two or zero marks (green) on their DNA (blue). These cells arrested due to increased levels of the tumor suppressor p53 (purple) and its transcriptional target, the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 (red). The cells could grow and progress toward a cancer-like state if missegregation was combined with a loss of p53.

FOCAL POINT Sarah Thompson and Duane Compton investigated why, unlike tumor cells, normal cells don't proliferate once they contain an abnormal number of chromosomes. The researchers introduced a single fluorescent mark into the genome of a diploid cell line, induced missegregation, and identified the cells that incorrectly carried two or zero marks (green) on their DNA (blue). These cells arrested due to increased levels of the tumor suppressor p53 (purple) and its transcriptional target, the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 (red). The cells could grow and progress toward a cancer-like state if missegregation was combined with a loss of p53.

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