It has recently been reported that the ATPase activity of DnaK, a 70 kDa heat shock protein from E. coli, is autostimulated by increasing protein concentration [(1993) FEBS Lett. 322, 277-279], suggesting that the DnaK dimer may be the enzymatically active species. In this paper we investigated the ATPase activity of different DnaK preparations; we found that the turnover number was very dependent on protein purification. With HPLC-purified DnaK we found a turnover number 20- to 50-fold lower than typical values previously published and no evidence of autostimulation, indicating that the monomer is the active species.