A microassay system was developed to quantify bovine neutrophil transepithelial migration in vitro. The bovine mammary epithelial cell line (MAC-T) formed a confluent monolayer that served as a biologically meaningful barrier for neutrophil migration. Neutrophils added into the upper compartment of an inverted monolayer were driven to migrate across the epithelium from a basal-to-apical direction by the addition of zymosan activated serum (ZAS) into the lower compartment. The numbers of migrated neutrophils were determined by assaying the neutrophil azurophilic granule marker, myeloperoxidase. Results showed that ZAS stimulated neutrophil migration across the epithelium in a time-and dose-dependent manner. In the presence of 5% ZAS and 2 x 10(6) neutrophils, approximately 2.4 x 10(5) neutrophils migrated across the epithelium in 120 min. The procedures we have developed in this study provide a simple precisely controlled system to investigate the normal dynamics of bovine neutrophil transepithelial migration and a means to detect and study impaired neutrophil migration.