Abstract: | Preparation of human sperm heads containing mainly nucleoprotamines as their chromatin constituent was described. Acrosome-depleted human sperm heads were treated with micrococcal nuclease followed with 2 M NaCl. The treatment specifically removed nucleohistone as small chromatin fragments from the human sperm heads. The nuclease-NaCl-treated sperm head pellets primarily contained nuclease-resistant nucleoprotamine as their chromatin. Transmission electron microscopic study showed that there were two populations of the nuclease-NaCl-treated human sperm head pellets. One population had thick nucleoprotamine cords of ?650–1,200 Å in diameter, and the other had thin nucleoprotamine cords of ?330–420 Å. |