Deleting SPA from the yeast genome has no detectable effect on viability or any other overt phenotypic effect but, as expected, it results in altered accumulation of polyamines in the cell. Interestingly, the effect is most pronounced in cells in stationary phase, where the knockout cells accumulate up to 40 times more putrescine than wild-type counterparts. This compares with a <2-fold increase of putrescine in exponentially growing cells. A likely explanation for this observation is that the usual rate of ornithine decarboxylation in exponentially growing cells is close to capacity given`normal' concentrations of substrate, enzyme and product. At the same time, all newly synthesized polyamines are continuously diluted through Fig. 6 . Effect of polyamine depletion on SPA +1 frameshifting. Polyamine depletion is achieved by overexpression of the wild-type version of SPA. The same cultures were assayed both for frameshifting and polyamine content. Numbers above columns indicate fold reduction of frameshifting and polyamine content compared with cells that do not overexpress SPA. Antizyme genes in S.pombe and C.elegans cell growth and division at a rate that is almost identical to the rate of maximum capacity synthesis. Cells in stationary phase can no longer dilute newly synthesized polyamines, and more importantly lack an effective antizymeindependent mechanism of shutting off ODC. This suggests that SPA is the primary regulator of ODC activity in S.pombe, not only during cell growth (short term regulation) but also in non-dividing cells (longer term regulation).