Centromeres of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe lack the highly 
repetitive sequences that make most other "regional" centromeres refractory to 
analysis. To map fission yeast centromeres, we applied H4S47C-anchored cleavage 
mapping and native and cross-linked chromatin immunoprecipitation with 
paired-end sequencing. H3 nucleosomes are nearly absent from the central domain, 
which is occupied by centromere-specific H3 (cenH3 or CENP-A) nucleosomes with 
two H4s per particle that are mostly unpositioned and are more widely spaced 
than nucleosomes elsewhere. Inner kinetochore proteins CENP-A, CENP-C, CENP-T, 
CENP-I, and Scm3 are highly enriched throughout the central domain except at 
tRNA genes, with no evidence for preferred kinetochore assembly sites. These 
proteins are weakly enriched and less stably incorporated in H3-rich 
heterochromatin. CENP-A nucleosomes protect less DNA from nuclease digestion 
than H3 nucleosomes, while CENP-T protects a range of fragment sizes. Our 
results suggest that CENP-T particles occupy linkers between CENP-A nucleosomes 
and that classical regional centromeres differ from other centromeres by the 
absence of CENP-A nucleosome positioning.