At the beginning of the 21st century, the role of p53 as a tumor suppressor was well established; however, the function of p53 other than tumor suppression, especially its function under physiological conditions, was poorly understood. Here, we revisited the journey of a multidisciplinary team of researchers that revealed an unexpected and important function of p53 in regulating maternal reproduction at that time. This finding of p53 in maternal reproduction helped us gain important insights about the p53 protein and expanded our understanding of p53 protein functions in addition to its tumor suppressive function. This finding also provided a possible clue to explain the observed evolutionary selection on some alleles of the p53 pathway.

中文翻译：

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p53在生殖中的作用，这是肿瘤抑制因子的意想不到的功能。

在21世纪初，p53作为肿瘤抑制因子的作用已经确立。然而，除肿瘤抑制作用外，p53的功能，特别是其在生理条件下的功能，了解得很少。在这里，我们回顾了一个由多学科研究人员组成的团队的旅程，该团队揭示了当时p53在调节孕产妇生殖方面出乎意料且重要的功能。p53在母体生殖中的这一发现帮助我们获得了有关p53蛋白的重要见解，并扩展了我们对p53蛋白功能（除了其抑癌功能）的理解。该发现也提供了可能的线索来解释在p53途径的一些等位基因上观察到的进化选择。