A century has already passed since FRIEDRICH MIESCHER, working at Strasbourg and Basel, began his study of protamine, one of the basic nuclear proteins of cells. It was first established by KOSSEL that protamine represents the simplest known protein. In the conviction that research into the nature of protamine would shed light on that of other typical proteins, a group of researchers in Germany followed MIESCHER and laid the foundations of protein chemistry. A general view of prot amines was thus built up by KOSSEL, working at Strasbourg, Berlin, Marburg an der Lahn, and Heidelberg, FELIX at Heidelberg, Munich, and Frankfurt am Main, and WALDSCHMIDT-LEITZ at Prague and Munich. Concepts and techniques established by these studies have been widely utilized for research on other typical proteins. The revolutionary advances in chemical and physical techniques after W orId War II extended the sphere of research to Tokyo in the Far East. Prof. FELIX' visit in 1955 greatly encouraged our research group in Tokyo. His death in August 1960 constituted a sad loss to protein chemistry and stimulated our group to assume responsibility for carrying on the studies. In the following decade we in Tokyo have been able to add a new development to the results on the chemical structure of protamines accumulated by the Eurqpean researchers over a period of about fifty years.

Contenu
I Introduction.- (Accompanied by a Select Bibliography on Protamines, Histones, and Nucleoproteins).- II Distribution of Nucleoprotamines and Protamines.- III Preparation of Nucleoprotamines and Protamines.- A. Isolation of Sperm Heads.- B. Isolation and Purification of Nucleoprotamine.- C. Separation and Purification of Protamines from Sperm Heads or Nucleoprotamine.- IV Composition.- A. Composition of Nucleoprotamines.- B. Composition of Unfractionated (or Whole) Protamines.- V Molecular Weight.- A. Nucleoprotamines.- B. Protamines (Whole or Unfractionated).- VI Chemical Structure of Nucleoprotamines and Protamines.- A. Nucleoprotamines.- B. Protamines (Whole or Unfractionated).- VII Heterogeneity of Protamines and Homogeneous Molecular Species of Protamines.- A. Heterogeneity in Protamines.- B. Preparative Fractionation of Protamines into Their Components.- VIII Chemical Structure of Homogeneous Molecular Species of Protamines.- A. Determination of the Complete Amino-Acid Sequence of Clupeine Z.- B. The Amino-Acid Sequence of Clupeine YII.- C. The Amino-Acid Sequence of Clupeine YI.- D. Comments on the Structure of Clupeine.- E. The Amino-Acid Sequences of the Three Components (Y'I, Y?II and Z?) of Clupeine from North Sea Herring.- F. The Amino-Acid Sequences of One Component of Salmine and Three Components of Iridine.- IX Physical Structure of Nucleoprotamines and Protamines.- A. Nucleoprotamines.- B. Protamines.- X Properties and Functions.- A. Physical Properties.- B. Chemical Properties.- C. Biological and Physiological Properties.- Acknowledgement.- References.