In an effort to maximize the amount of genetic information that can be extracted from a blood sample, we investigated the use of two-dimensional polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis (PAGE) to resolve the protein constituents of the erythrocyte membrane. Lyophilized membranes were dissolved in various concentrations of urea, NP-40 detergent, and mercaptoethanol and subjected to two-dimensional PAGE by a modification of the O'Farrell procedure, with use of the ISO-DALT apparatus. More than 600 spots were visible in silver-stained gels under conditions that excluded specific cytoskeleton protein components, including spectrin and actin. The reproducibility of the pattern depended highly on the precise composition of the solubilization mixture. Poor resolution was observed in the presence of actin and other proteins of high molecular mass (spectrin bands 1 and 2) when we used high urea concentrations that solubilized the entire erythrocyte membrane. The large number of polypeptides observed could not be attributed to proteolysis, because addition of proteolytic inhibitors to the membrane wash solutions did not alter the pattern on the gel. The pattern also did not appear to include erythrocyte cytosol proteins because, except for globin, none of five purified erythrocyte lysate proteins was visible in the erythrocyte membrane gels. We conclude that two-dimensional electrophoresis provides a powerful tool for the study of non-cytoskeletal erythrocyte membrane proteins.