This paper describes the purification and properties of a multicatalytic proteinase complex, proteasome, from bovine skeletal muscle, in comparision with proteasome prepared from other species or organs. The purified bovine skeletal muscle proteasome exhibited a single band on polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under nondenaturing conditions. Bovine skeletal muscle proteasome degraded synthetic peptides maximally at pH 8.0. Relative to pH 8.0, activities were gradually decreased with the lowering pH, but the extent of decrease was substrate-dependent, and the activity at pH 5.5 still retained 78-10% of the activity at pH 8.0, indicating the possibility that the proteasome is active in muscle during aging. When the proteasome was heated at 60°C for 15 or 30 min and treated in the presence of 0.0125% SDS, the activity increased over 1.8 and 3.1 times (LLVY (Suc-Leu-Leu-Val-Tyr-NH-Mec) as a substrate), respectively. These results (activation with heat or SDS) indicate that the hydrolytic activity of proteasome was stimulated under mild denaturing conditions. The characteristics of the bovine skeletal muscle proteasome obtained in our experiment were almost the same as those of the proteasome prepared from other species or organs.