We studied the surface delivery pathways followed by newly synthesized plasma membrane proteins in intestinal cells. To this end, we developed an assay and characterized an epithelial cell line (SK-CO-15) derived from human colon adenocarcinoma. Polarized confluent monolayers (2000 omega.cm2), grown on polycarbonate filter chambers, were pulsed with radioactive methionine/cysteine and, at different times of chase, the protein fraction reaching the apical or basolateral surface was recovered by domain-selective biotinylation, immunoprecipitation, and immobilized streptavidin precipitation. Both an apical and a basolateral marker were found to be delivered vectorially to the respective surface, with a sorting efficiency of 50:1 for the basolateral marker and 14:1 for the apical marker.