The Ca2+/Mg2+ ATPase, which is activated by millimolar concentrations of Ca2+ or Mg2+, was solubilized from rat heart plasma membrane by employing lysophosphatidylcholine, CHAPS, NaI, EDTA and Tris-HCl at pH 7.4. The enzyme was purified by sucrose density gradient, Affi-Gel Blue column and Sepharose 6B column chromatography. The purified enzyme was seen as a single peptide band in the sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with a molecular weight of about 90,000. The apparent molecular weight of the holoenzyme as determined under non-dissociating conditions by gel filtration on Sepharose 6B column was about 180,000 indicating two subunits. The enzyme was insensitive to ouabain, verapamil, vanadate, oligomycin, N,N-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide and NaN3, but was markedly inhibited by 20 microM gramicidin S and 50 microM trifluoperazine. Analysis of the purified Ca2+/Mg2+ ATPase revealed the presence of 17 amino acids where leucine, glutamic acid and aspartic acid were the major components and histidine, cysteine and methionine were the minor components. The purified enzyme was associated with 19.7 mumol phospholipid/mg protein which was 60 times higher than the phospholipid content in plasma membrane. The cholesterol content in the purified enzyme preparation was 0.75 mumol/mg protein and this represented an 8-fold enrichment over plasma membrane. The glycoprotein nature of the enzyme was evident from the positive periodic acid-Schiff staining of the purified Ca2+/Mg2+ ATPase in the sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel. The polysaccharide content of the enzyme was enriched 8-fold over plasma membrane; neuraminidase treatment decreased the polysaccharide content. Concanavalin A prevented the ATP-dependent inactivation of the purified Ca2+/Mg2+ ATPase and was found to bind to the purified enzyme with a KD of 576 nM and Bmax of 4.52 nmol/mg protein. The results indicate that Ca2+/Mg2+ ATPase is a glycoprotein and contains a large amount of lipids.