TP53 and cancer: The recent application of massively parallel next‐generation sequencing to a growing number of cancer genomes has revealed abundant mutually exclusive genetic alteration events (Cancer Genome Atlas, 2012; Network, 2013; Ping et al., 2014), including numerous known cancer driver genes, such as RAS and TP53. These mutually exclusive genetic alterations can affect similar downstream pathways, exhibiting strong functional redundancy (Ciriello et al., 2012).