Remaining Mysteries of Molecular Biology: The Role of Polyamines in the Cell

The polyamines (PAs) spermidine, spermine, putrescine and cadaverine are an essential class of metabolites found throughout all kingdoms of life. In this comprehensive review, we discuss their metabolism, their various intracellular functions and their unusual and conserved regulatory features. These include the regulation of translation via upstream open reading frames, the over-reading of stop codons via ribosomal frameshifting, the existence of an antizyme and an antizyme inhibitor, ubiquitin-independent proteasomal degradation, a complex bi-directional membrane transport system and a unique posttranslational modification-hypusination-that is believed to occur on a single protein only (eIF-5A). Many of…

• WT
  Wellcome Trust

  Award: RG 093735/Z/10/Z
• ME
  Medical Engineering Centre King’s College London

  Award: RG 093735/Z/10/Z
• ER
  European Research Council

  Award: 260809