This paper describes in vitro experiments with two types of intramolecular duplex structures that inhibit translation in cis by preventing the formation of an initiation complex or by causing the complex to be abortive. One stem-loop structure (AG = -30 kcal/mol) prevented mRNA from engaging 40S subunits when the hairpin occurred 12 nucleotides (nt) from the cap but had no deleterious effect when it was repositioned 52 nt from the cap. This result confirms prior in vivo evidence that the 40S subunit-factor complex, once bound to mRNA, has considerable ability to penetrate secondary structure. Consequently, translation is most sensitive to secondary structure at the entry site for ribosomes, i.e., the 5' end of the mRNA. The second stem-loop structure (hp7; AG = -61 kcal/mol, located 72 nt from the cap) was too stable to be unwound by 40S ribosomes. hp7 did not prevent a 40S ribosomal subunit from binding but caused the 40S subunit to stall on the 5' side of the hairpin, exactly as the scanning model predicts. Control experiments revealed that 80S elongating ribosomes could disrupt duplex structures, such as hp7, that were too stable to be penetrated by the scanning 40S ribosome-factor complex. A third type of base-paired structure shown to inhibit translation in vivo involves a long-range interaction between the 5' and 3' noncoding sequences.The scanning model for initiation in eucaryotes postulates three steps in the association of mRNA with 40S ribosomal subunits: binding of a 40S ribosomal subunit-factor complex to the capped 5' end of the mRNA (step 1), followed by linear migration (step 2) which ends when the 40S subunit reaches (usually) the first AUG codon (step 3).Step 1 is facilitated by the m7G cap (29) and a well-characterized cap-binding protein (30).Step 3, recognition of the AUG codon, is mediated by eIF2-modulated base pairing with the anticodon in Met-tRNAMet (5,6) and, at least in higher eucaryotes, by a consensus sequence that flanks the AUG codon (12,14,15). Step 2 is supported by evidence that is provocative but indirect, namely, the effects of the antibiotic edeine on formation of initiation complexes (22) The aforementioned finding emerged in the course of a broader study of the circumstances and cis-limited mechanisms of inhibition of translation by mRNA secondary structure. There have been numerous reports concerning the ability of secondary structure to inhibit translation of eucaryotic mRNAs in vivo (reviewed in reference 17; see also Discussion). Here I have resorted to cell-free translation systems to study the level at which translation is blocked by two specific structures: (i) a moderately stable hairpin (AG = -30 kcal/mol) which does not inhibit translation when it occurs around the AUG initiator codon (i.e., some distance downstream from the cap) but does inhibit when it is moved close to the 5' end of the transcript and (ii) a very stable hairpin (AG = -61 kcallmol) which inhibits, no matter where it occurs within the 5' noncoding region, by halting the migration of 40S ribosom...