Human embryonic lung (MRC-5), feline embryo (FEA), mink lung (Mv1Lu) and monkey kidney (BSC-1) cells infected by respiratory syncytial virus showed characteristic morphological changes when viewed by scanning electron microscopy. The surfaces of respiratory syncytial virus-infected cells developed a profusion of slender filaments after 48 h incubation at 31 degrees C. Similar changes in surface morphology were observed in BSC-1 cells infected by murine pneumonia virus. Filament production therefore appears to be a common property of pneumo-viruses. Filaments were not observed in cells infected with either syncytial and non-syncytial herpes simplex virus, the cytocidal vesicular stomatitis and Batai (Bunyaviridae) viruses, or the focus-inducing rabbit fibroma virus. Filament production was not observed in cells infected with ts mutants of respiratory syncytial (RS) virus during incubation at the restrictive temperature, or in a persistently infected culture of BSC-1 cells at 37 degrees C. The persistently infected cells (the RS ts 1/BSC-1 line) had some of the characteristics of cells transformed by oncogenic viruses, namely ability to overlap adjacent cells and agglutination by a low concentration of concanavalin A. The pseudo-transformed phenotype was temperature-dependent, however, and suppressed by raising the temperature of incubation to 39 degrees C. The presence of virus antigen at the cell surface was similarly temperature-dependent in these cells, diminished at high temperature (39 degrees C) and enhanced at low temperature (31 degrees C), suggesting that the changes in the host cell were the result of insertion of virus protein into the cell membrane. Evidently, persistent infection by a cytoplasmic virus can produce alterations in the host cell usually associated with transformation by nuclear viruses.