Extracts from unfertilized sea urchin eggs contain an inhibitor of translation that inhibits protein synthesis in cell-free translation systems from sea urchin embryos or rabbit reticulocytes. The inhibitory effects of egg extracts can be reversed by the addition of mammalian eukaryotic initiation factor 4F (eIF-4F) in both sea urchin embryo and reticulocyte systems, suggesting that the inhibitor inactivates this initiation factor. The accumulated data suggest that the ability of eIF-4F to recycle may be compromised. The addition of eIF-4F to cell-free translation systems from unfertilized sea urchin eggs also stimulates protein synthesis. However, the stimulation does not increase protein synthetic activity in the egg cell-free translation system to the levels observed in those produced from 2-hr embryos. This suggests that, although the unfertilized egg contains an inhibitor of eIF-4F and reduced levels of eIF-4F activity, inactivation of this component is only one of the factors involved in the low rate of maternal mRNA utilization found prior to fertilization.