The plasma membrane composition of virtually all eukaryotic cells is maintained and continually modified by the recycling of specific protein and lipid components. In the kidney collecting duct, urinary acidification and urinary concentration are physiologically regulated at the cellular level by the shuttling of proton pumps and water channels between intracellular vesicles and the plasma membrane of highly specialized cell types. In the intercalated cell, hydrogen ion secretion into the urine is modulated by the recycling of vesicles carrying a proton pumping ATPase to and from the plasma membrane. In the principal cell, the antidiuretic hormone, vasopressin, induces the insertion of vesicles that contain proteinaceous water channels into the apical cell membrane, thus increasing the permeability to water of the epithelial layer. In both cell types, 'coated' carrier vesicles are involved in this process, but whereas clathrin-coated vesicles are involved in the endocytotic phase of water channel recycling, the transporting vesicles in intercalated cells are coated with the cytoplasmic domains of the proton pumping ATPase. By a combination of morphological and functional techniques using FITC-dextran as an endosomal marker, we have shown that recycling endosomes from intercalated cells are acidifying vesicles but that they do not contain water channels. In contrast, principal cell vesicles that recycle water channels do not acidify their lumens in response to ATP. These non-acidic vesicles lack functionally important subunits of the vacuolar proton ATPase, including the 16 kDa proteolipid that forms the transmembrane proton pore. Because these endosomes are directly derived via clathrin-mediated endocytosis, our results indicate that endocytotic clathrin-coated vesicles are non-acidic compartments in principal cells. In contrast, recycling vesicles in intercalated cells contain large numbers of proton pumps, arranged in hexagonally packed arrays on the vesicle membrane. These pumps are inserted into the apical plasma membrane of A-type (acid-secreting) intercalated cells, and the basolateral plasma membrane of B-type (bicarbonate-secreting) cells in the collecting duct. Both apical and basolateral targeting of H(+)-ATPase-containing vesicles in these cells may be directed by microtubules, because polarized insertion of the pump into both membrane domains is disrupted by microtubule depolymerizing agents. However, the basolateral localization of other transporting proteins in intercalated cells, including the band 3-like anion exchanger and facilitated glucose transporters, is not affected by microtubule disruption.