We report the biochemical characterization of calhepatin, a calcium-binding protein of the S100 family, isolated from lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa) liver. The primary structure, determined by Edman degradation and MS/MS, shows that the sequence identities with the other members of the family are lower than those between S100 proteins from different species. Calhepatin is composed of 75 residues and has a molecular mass of 8670 Da. It is smaller than calbindin D9k (78 residues), the smallest S100 described so far