Chromatin receptor proteins appear to mediate some actions of thyroid hormone. In this study, sheared mammalian chromatin containing [125Itriiodo-thyronine (T3) bound by these receptors was separated using sucrose gradient velocity sedimentation. T3-receptor complexes were distributed throughout the chromatin fractions, but were enriched in the slowly sedimenting fractions. The latter contain most of the template capacity for RNA synthesis and most of the endogenous RNA polymerase activity but a minor portion of the total DNA. Formaldehyde treatment of chromatin containing receptor-bound [1261IT3 resulted in fixation of radioactivity, as evidenced by its migration with chromatin after equilibrium density gradient sedimentation in both cesium chloride and Conray. This fixation implies that the T3 receptor protein is closely associated with chromatin. These results suggest that proteins involved in the regulation of gene function may be nonrandomly distributed within chromatin subfractions, and are consistent with a direct role for thyroid hormone in regulating genetic expression.Thyroid hormones play a key role in vertebrate development and maintenance (1-3). Recently, high-affinity, limitedcapacity binding sites for triiodothyronine (T3), and thyroxine (T4), which appear to be receptors for these hormones, have been found in target cell nuclei (4-15). The concentrations of T3 or T4 required for binding to these receptors and for bioreactivity are similar (6), and there is a good correlation between the ability of thyroid hormone analogs to inhibit T3-receptor binding and to promote the biological effect (15). Studies of thyroid hormone analogs also suggest that T3 and T4 function through physical interactions, such as with receptors, rather than through chemical reactions involving iodine or quinones (16).The thyroid hormone receptors appear to be salt-extractable, acidic chromatin proteins (5,8,10,11). The possibility that thyroid hormones act at the chromatin level is also consistent with findings that these hormones influence RNA synthesis (3,17,18). Thus, the receptors may represent an identifiable acidic chromatin protein which possibly regulates the expression of specific genes. In the present studies, the T3 receptor association with chromatin and distribution within sheared chromatin subfractions (19,20)