Ribosomal protein L24 (RPL24) is implicated in translation reinitiation of polycistronic mRNA. Nishimura et al. (pages 2940–2953) isolated a novel Arabidopsis mutant, short valve1 (stv1), in which one of the RPL24-encoding genes is deleted. This mutant shows a shorter valve (ovary) region, similar to defects found in mutants of the auxin response factor (ARF) genes ETTIN (ETT) and MONOPTEROS (MP). The authors demonstrate that RPL24-dependent translation reinitiation plays an important role in the expression of ETT and MP because they carry upstream open reading frames that negatively regulate their translation. They propose that perturbation of translation reinitiation of the ARF transcripts causes the defects in gynoecium patterning observed in the stv mutant. The cover shows a flower of the stv1 mutant with gynoecium of short ovary (magenta) and long gynophore (green).