Chemical and physical characterization of rabbit sperm acrosome stabilizing factor.

Rabbit Acrosome Stabilizing Factor (ASF) is an epididymal product that reversibly inhibits the process of sperm capacitation. The native molecular weights of the monomer and dimer ASF were determined from sedimentation and diffusion data at 129,000 and 259,000 Mr. The monomer is composed of 92,000 and 38,000 Mr subunits according to sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), with size heterogeneity demonstrated for the latter. The stoichiometry of the subunits appears to be one-to-one by gel scanning. Amino acid and carbohydrate compositions are characteristic of a globular glycoprotein, which is high in cysteine content and is 8.3% carbohydrate by weight. The sugar composition suggests the presence of both high mannose and complex N-linked oligosaccharides with the unusual feature of appreciable amounts of glucose. The isoelectric character of ASF spans a range from 5.3 to 7.0.