The course of the reaction of the cystine in wool with alkali has been reinvestigated. The earlier findings that one sulfur atom is split from each molecule of cystine a re confi rmed. Of the residual noncystine s ulfur in the alka li-tregted wool, mbre than 25 percent has bee n accounted for as lanthionine. No signifi cant amounts of s ulfhydryl groups are in the t reated wools. The res ults lead to the conclusion that the alkali cleavage of the dis ulfide group does not consist prim a rily in a hydrolytic rupture between the s ulfur atoms with the formation of a s ulfhydryl compound and a s ulfenic acid, as postulated earlier; rather, they are more consistent with a mechanism recently advanced by N icolet and Shinn, which involves a rupture between s ulfur and carbon to yield dehydroalanine and a -C H 2 -S-SH residue. An atom of s ulfur is then eliminated from the latter and the sulfhydryl group thus formed reacts with dehyclroalanine to form lantilionine.