A rapid and efficient procedure was developed for obtaining highly purified human proacrosin. Ejaculated spermatozoa were washed via centrifugation through 1 M sucrose containing 50 mM benzamidine and acid-extracted in the presence of benzamidine. The solubilized material was dialyzed then lyophilized. The sample was resuspended in 8 M guanidine hydrochloride in acetic acid (0.5 M) pH 2.5 and then subjected to gel permeation chromatography with an automated fast protein liquid chromatography system utilizing two Pharmacia Superose 12 columns set in tandem that were equilibrated in the same buffer. The proacrosin eluted as an individual peak that was well separated from another proteinase zymogen referred to as sperminogen. The proacrosin preparation was determined to be highly purified when observed on silver-stained SDS-polyacrylamide gels as well as on gelatin-SDS-polyacrylamide gels. The proacrosin appeared as a doublet (Mr = 55,000 and 53,000) on both of these systems. The autoconversion of proacrosin to acrosin at pH 8 resulted in a typical sigmoidal autoactivation curve. Following protein staining of SDS-polyacrylamide gels, it was shown that upon activation of purified proacrosin preparations the 55,000 and 53,000 molecular weight proteins were initially degraded to a 49,000 form and then to several lower molecular weight forms (Mr = 40,000-34,000). Similar findings with regard to proteolytic digestion were observed following gelatin-SDS-polyacrylamide zymography except that an increase with time in proteinase intensity between 58,000 and 53,000 was also observed. Cobalt and calcium were found to be potent inhibitors of the conversion of proacrosin into acrosin, while sodium resulted in much less inhibition of this process. Calcium was found to markedly enhance the proteolytic activity of human acrosin, while it had no observable influence on the acrosin hydrolysis of benzoylarginine ethyl ester. Thus, the described purification procedure resulted in a highly purified proacrosin preparation in sufficient yields to allow for its partial characterization.