Ornithine Decarboxylase Antizyme 2 (OAZ2)

Antizyme expression is auto-regulated by polyamine-enhanced translational frameshifting. The antizyme encoded by this gene inhibits ornithine decarboxylase but does not accelerate its degradation.The antizyme-2 gene has a similar structure to that of antizyme-1, with an upstream ORF (ORF1) providing the initiation codon for the downstream ORF2.

The nucleotide sequence surrounding the translational frameshift site contains the conserved 5-prime 50-nucleotide signal and 3-prime RNA pseudoknot structure flanking the ORF1 stop codon. The predicted gene product resulting from the translation frameshift contains 189 amino acids and shares 54% identity with antizyme-1. Human and mouse antizyme-2 differ by only 1 amino acid.