The core set of commonly down-regulated genes included ZBTB2, which encodes a negative regulator of p53 signalling (Jeon et al, 2009) and POU2F2, which encodes a homeobox transcription factor involved in the germinal centre reaction, in response to viral infection (Karnowski et al, 2012) and that has recently been shown to be mutated in DLBCL (Zhang et al, 2013) (Fig 4D, E). Here, TP53 is linked to viral infectious disease.