Equilibrium sedimentation experiments of the native acid phosphatase indicate a dimer-tetramer dissociating nonequilibrating system with a dimer Mr = 180,000 g/mol. The hydrolysis of nitrophenylphosphate was used to determine the sedimentation coefficient of the active species. The s20,w value for the species which degrades nitrophenylphosphate is 13.52 +/- 0.46 S in 1% sucrose and 13.72 +/- 0.11 S in 1.3 M sodium chloride, corresponding to the Svedberg value of the tetramer species. Several lines of evidence are presented which, together with previous data, indicate that the Schizosaccharomyces pombe nonspecific acid phosphatase is composed of 4 identical or nearly identical polypeptide chains: a, equilibrium sedimentation analysis of the enzyme in denaturing agents indicates the presence of homogeneous material having Mr = 90,800 g/mol; b, digestion with carboxypeptidase A releases 0.82 mol of tyrosine/monomer molecular weight. Concomitant phosphatase inactivation occurred during the splitting off of the tyrosyl terminal residue. Furthermore, a unique NH2-terminal residue (histidine) was determined.