An analysis of the recently reported cDNA derived amino acid sequences of mouse (Kleene and Flynn, J. Biol. Chem. 262, 17272-17277, 1987) and rat (Luersson et al., Nucl. Acids Res. 17, 3585, 1989). TP2 has revealed the presence of two potential zinc finger motifs involving cysteine and histidine residues. TP2, as purified from rat elongating spermatids, is shown here to contain 0.2 atoms of zinc bound per molecule of the protein by atomic absorption spectroscopy. On incubation with 10 microM ZnCl2, in vitro, and subsequent exhaustive dialysis, TP2 had 2 atoms of zinc bound per molecule. The involvement of cysteine residues of TP2 in coordination with zinc was also suggested by the observation that TP2 could be labeled, in situ, with iodoacetamidofluorescein only after preincubation of spermatid nuclei with EDTA. The zinc finger domains of TP2 may play an important role in initiation of chromatin condensation and/or cessation of transcriptional activity during mammalian spermiogenesis.