In the course of our experiments, it became obvious that the Golgi apparatus becomes progressively dispersed during infection co-concominantly with disruption of the microtubule network ( Figure 6 ). Further analysis showed that during infection the normal morphology of the microtubule cytoskeleton is replaced by morphologically aberrant microtubule forms, which vary among each other but have in common the absence of a discrete MTOC ( Figure 7 ). These aberrant forms can be broadly classi®ed into three types: (i) cells with a disorganized microtubule network where microtubules seem randomly oriented ( Figure 7E ); (ii) cells in which microtubules form rings around the nucleus and throughout the cytoplasm ( Figure 7H ); or (iii) cells with long projections consisting of microtubule bundles ( Figure 7K ). We quanti®ed the appearance of the different morphological forms in ®ve independent infection experiments, in which 200 cells were counted for each time point for each experiment ( Figure 7C , F, I and L). Small compact cells, representing 20.7 6 2.6, 21.8 6 12.4 and 29.7 6 15.2% for 5, 8 and 24 h post-infection, respectively, in which the microtubule cytoskeleton morphology was not evident were not included in the analysis. Already by 5 h post-infection, when virus particle assembly has occurred, the normal aster microtubule con®guration has been disrupted and replaced in the majority of cells by microtubules without obvious organization from the MTOC ( Figure 7F ). Furthermore,~10% of cells have microtubule rings and 5% of cells have long projections by this time point ( Figure 7I and L). As the infection proceeds, microtubules become progressively more disrupted and bundled ( Figure 7I and L).