As expected from their small cationic nature and ability to neutralize negative charges locally, polyamines play key roles in processes ranging from the functioning of certain ion channels (Williams, 1997) , nucleic acid packaging, DNA replication, apoptosis, transcription and translation. The role of polyamines can be complex as illustrated by the transfer of the butylamine moiety of spermidine to a lysine residue to form hypusine in mammalian translation initiation factor eIF-5A, the only known substrate for this reaction (Tome et al., 1997; Lee et al., 1999) . Spermine negatively regulates the growth of prostatic carcinoma cells at their primary site (Smith et al., 1995) , but at later stages of tumor progression it fails to induce antizyme, which correlates with cells becoming refractory to spermine (Koike et al., 1999) . Lack of antizyme function is also important in the early deregulation of cellular proliferation in oral tumors (Tsuji Conservation of polyamine regulation by translational frameshifting from yeast to mammals The EMBO Journal Vol. 19 No. 8 pp. 1907±1917, 2000 ã European Molecular Biology Organization et al., 1998) and probably others. The levels of polyamines are altered in many tumors, and inhibitors of polyamine synthesis are being tested for antiproliferative and cell death effects. The synthesis of ODC varies during the cell cycle in normal cells (Linden et al., 1985; Fredlund et al., 1995) . It is induced by many growth stimuli and is constitutively elevated in transformed cells (Pegg, 1988; Auvinen et al., 1992) with some phosphorylated ODC being translocated to the surface membrane where it is important for mitotic cytoskeleton rearrangement events (Heiskala et al., 1999) .