ABSTRACT. Intact A431 cells were labeled with [f-32P]ATP. The major phosphorylation product of the ectokinase activity of A431 cells had the molecular mass of 170 kd and was identified as EGF receptor by specific immunoprecipitation. This phosphorylation was not stimulated by EGFadded to the reaction buffer, but replacement of MgCl2 by MnChin the buffer remarkably stimulated phosphorylation. An exogenous protein substrate, a-casein, was also phosphorylated by intact A431 cells. The analyses for phospho-amino acids of both EGF receptor and a-casein revealed that phosphorylation occurred mainly at phosphotyrosine residues. Tryptic phospho-peptides of the EGF receptor of intact A431 cells labeled with [f-32P]ATP were fractionated by HPLC. The elution patterns were essentially the same as that of the autophosphorylated EGFreceptor, indicating that the phosphorylation sites of EGFreceptor labeled in vivo with [f-32P]ATP are located in three tyrosine residues in the carboxyl terminus. These results indicate that the carboxyl-terminal tyrosine kinase domain of a small fraction of the EGFreceptor molecules of an A431cell is exposed on the outer surface of the cells.Since the discovery of phosphotyrosine in Polioma virus T-antigen, many regulatory proteins have been found to have tyrosine kinase activity. Most of tyrosine kinases found to date are classified into two categories: (i ) oncogene products of several distinct groups of retroviruses like pp60v src, and (ii) receptors for growth factors like the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor (6), the platelet-derived growth factor receptor (5), and the insulin receptor (8, 9). The src-type tyrosine kinases are located on the inner side of the plasma membrane, but receptor-type tyrosine kinases contain two functional domainslinked by a transmembraneregion. The extracellular domain possesses a ligand-binding site, and the intracellular portion includes a tyrosine kinase domain at the carboxyl terminus. Protein-kinase activity has also been demonstrated on the external surface of intact cells of a variety of cell lines (4). In HeLa cells, such a surface kinase (ecto-kinase) was detected, but it phosphorylates its substrates in serine and threoninf residues (10, ll). These findings indicate that protein-