The research carried out in my lab over the past 25+ years, funded by a Senior Research Fellowship from The Wellcome Trust and research grants from the BBSRC, has been directed at the identification of the intracellular signalling mechanisms involved in the regulation of mRNA recruitment to the ribosome during different phases of the cell cycle. In particular, we have chosen to determine the role of individual initiation factors and their post-translational modification in the activation of protein synthesis following the induction of cell growth, and in the maintenance of translation rates during cell death and differentiation. More recently we have become interested in the role for localised translation in controlling cell polarity and migration.