Researchers from the MRC Protein Phosphorylation and Ubiquitylation Unit at the University of Dundee, together with collaborators from ETH Zürich, the Malopolska Center of Biotechnology and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, report a new link between protein quality control and DNA damage responses. The work centers on MINDY3, a deubiquitinase enzyme, and reveals that it carries a distinctive EF-hand region that acts as a novel ubiquitin-binding domain.