Using a water-soluble, reversible biotinylating reagent, we retrieved three surface-exposed proteins from a complex mixture of crude membrane proteins. The compound, sulfosuccinimidyl 2-(biotinamido)ethyl-1-3'-dithiopropionate (sulfo-NHS-SS-biotin), which has a cleavable disulfide bond, was used to label Dictyostelium discoideum amebae. Cells were lysed and a crude membrane preparation was isolated and solubilized with Triton X-100. Biotinylated molecules were bound to immobilized streptavidin and then eluted from the affinity matrix with dithiothreitol. Analysis by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that out of the original complex mixture of detergent-solubilized membrane proteins, three major species at 130, 100, and 77 kDa were specifically bound and eluted with thiol reagents. These three proteins were glycoproteins (gp) since they bound concanavalin A. As demonstrated by one-dimensional peptide mapping, the retrieved gp130 and gp100 also were present in specialized plasma membrane subdomains called contact regions which are regions of cell-cell cohesion isolated from aggregated, developed amebae. This finding provides preliminary evidence that the two proteins may be involved in cell-cell interactions during both the vegetative and aggregation stages of the D. discoideum life cycle. The retrieved gp130 species has a relative mobility on SDS-gels similar to that of gp126, a surface-exposed glycoprotein. gp126 has been suggested to play roles both as a phagocytosis receptor and as a cohesion molecule (C.M. Chadwick, J.E. Ellison, and D.R. Garrod, (1984) Nature (London) 307, 646). To test if the retrieved gp130 was the same as gp126, a polyclonal antiserum was raised against gel-purified, endoglycosidase F-treated gp130. The immune serum recognized epitopes, apparently carbohydrates, present on many D. discoideum membrane proteins. Univalent IgG fragments from this antiserum inhibited phagocytosis, suggesting that anti-carbohydrate activity was responsible for the functional inhibition of phagocytosis.