As reinitiation is not absolutely dependent on the close proximity of stop and start codons ( Figure 5A) , it seemed conceivable that termination-reinitiation could still occur efficiently if the start codon of the BM2fluc ORF was moved downstream of the stop codon of rlucM1. A series of mRNAs were prepared in which the original BM2fluc start codon was mutated to AGC and new AUG restart codons inserted independently at +12, +24, +36, +48 and +63 nt, again preserving the wild-type Kozak consensus. As can be seen in Figure 6A , movement of the start codon to +12 resulted in 50% inhibition of fluc synthesis, but there was no further reduction in product yield when the restart codon was displaced further downstream. However, the electrophoretic mobility of this reinitiation product did not show the clear increase that would be expected given that the restart product would become progressively smaller with increased displacement of the restart codon. Rather, the reinitiation product band seemed less sharp and more diffuse with the +48 and +63 mRNAs. This suggested the possibility that reinitiation might be occurring at two sites: one in the region of the wild-type reinitiation site (and so necessarily at a non-AUG codon), and the other at the displaced AUG restart codon.