Vinculin, a 130-kDa protein discovered in chicken gizzard smooth-muscle cells and subsequently also described in platelets, is believed to be involved in membrane-cytoskeleton interactions. In this study we investigated vinculin distribution in human blood platelets. Two skeletal fractions and a remaining cytosolic fraction were prepared with a recently described Triton X-100 lysis buffer causing minimal post-lysis breakdown by proteolysis. The presence of vinculin was demonstrated in the membrane skeleton and cytosol of resting and thrombin-activated human platelets. Upon thrombin stimulation vinculin also appeared in the cytoskeleton. This cytoskeletal incorporation was completed during the early stages of platelet aggregation and secretion, when the uptake of myosin, actin-binding protein and talin was still not maximal. We conclude therefore, that vinculin may play an important role in the structural (re)organisation of the human platelet cytoskeleton upon platelet activation.Vinculin is a 130-kDa protein which was first discovered in chicken gizzard smooth-muscle cells [ 11, and subsequently also in other cells [2 -51, including bovine [6] and human blood platelets 17 -101. There are two main lines of evidence which suggest that vinculin is a member of the protein complex that links actin filaments to the plasma membrane, and is thus involved in cytoskeleton-membrane attachment [I -41. First, in several cell types the protein was found to be located at specialized sites where microfilament bundles terminate close to the plasma membrane: the dense plaques of smooth-muscle cells [3, We recently demonstrated the incorporation of vinculin into the cytoskeleton of bovine blood platelets upon thrombin stimulation [15]. However, there were two main reasons for investigating this incorporation further. First, the incorporation was much slower than the platelet aggregation reaction, which would indicate a role for vinculin solely in the later stages of platelet activation. Second, platelets contain not only a cytoskeleton but also a membrane skeleton, i.e. a peripheral layer of actin filaments, composed of short filaments crosslinked by actin-binding protein and linked to the plasma membrane, primarily to the glycoprotein Ib/IX complex [16]. This layer lies just below the lipid bilayer and appears to follow the contours of the plasma membrane. It remains at the periphery