Rats bearing the Yoshida AH-130 ascites hepatoma for 7 days showed an important decrease in muscle mass--over 30% in gastrocnemius and extensor digitorum longus (EDL)--in relation to non-tumour-bearing controls, which is associated with an increased proteolytic rate in in vitro incubation. In order to identify the precise biochemical process which was involved, we measured different proteolytic systems in incubated EDL muscles. The capacity for intralysosomal proteolysis, as measured by sensitivity to methylamine, was not increased in tumour-bearing rats, suggesting that the mechanism involved in the increased proteolytic rate was extralysosomal. Incubations using the Ca2+ ionophore A23187 revealed no change in the activity of calcium-dependent proteases as a consequence of tumour growth. Finally, muscle incubation in an ATP-depleted medium allowed us to conclude that energy-dependent proteases were involved in the activation of muscle proteolysis in tumour-bearing rats. In particular, the ubiquitin-dependent proteolytic system is involved, since there is an important increase in ubiquitin conjugates in the skeletal muscle of tumour-bearing rats. It may thus be suggested that extralysosomal ATP- and ubiquitin-dependent proteases underlie the biochemical mechanism of muscle wastage associated with cancer cachexia.