However, in both human and mouse, smooth muscle cells that lack SRF exhibit an increased propensity to enter senescence (Angstenberger et al., 2007; Hengst et al., 1994; Werth et al., 2010), while MRTF–SRF signalling suppresses oncogene-induced senescence in cancer cells lacking the tumour suppressor DLC1, a RhoGAP (Hampl et al., 2013; Hermanns et al., 2017). The gene discussed is DLC1; the disease is cancer.