In mammalian cells, aberrant expression of L31 ribosomal protein has been associated with cancer malignancy, affecting signaling pathways (Wu et al., 2023), but in trypanosomes, RPL31, apart from a structural component of the large ribosomal subunit is associated with a small rRNA (srRNA3) involved in the process of ribosome assembly (Liu et al., 2016). Here, RPL31 is linked to cancer.