Protein tyrosine phosphorylations are involved in the proliferation and secretory responses of immune cells, but their role in phagocytes is poorly understood. The ability of unopsonized zymosan to induce protein tyrosine phosphorylations was investigated in human monocytes. The addition of zymosan to monocytes resulted in an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation of several endogenous proteins including 28-, 33-, 38-, 42-, 47-, 55- to 60-, 62-, 68-, 90-, 105-, 116-, and 120-kDa proteins; 55- to 60-kDa proteins were the predominant phosphoproteins. Moreover, we studied the effects of tyrphostin 23, a specific tyrosine kinase inhibitor, on stimulated tyrosine phosphorylations and early secretory responses of monocytes, i.e., arachidonic acid release and oxidative metabolism. We showed that tyrphostin inhibited zymosan-stimulated tyrosine phosphorylations and arachidonic acid release, but that it did not affect superoxide generation induced by zymosan. Zymosan binds mainly to CR3 receptor on human monocytes, and CR3 is devoid of intrinsic tyrosine kinase activity. It was predictable that zymosan stimulated a tyrosine kinase distal to the receptor or associated with it. We observed that PMA mimicked zymosan-induced tyrosine phosphorylations, thus suggesting that both agonists used a common transductional pathway implicating the serine/threonine kinase, protein kinase C. The antagonists of protein kinase C, sphingosine and calphostin C, inhibited zymosan-stimulated tyrosine phosphorylations. We suggest that, in human monocytes, zymosan-induced tyrosine phosphorylations are involved in cell responses such as the release of arachidonic acid, and that they require the sequential activation of protein kinase C and cellular protein tyrosine kinases.