We have used affinity-purified antibodies reacting with guinea pig soleus muscle and ventricular myosin heavy chains to analyze the distribution of specific isomyosin in the ventricular myocardium of normal and renal hypertensive rats. Immunofluorescent staining of cardiac tissue sections with the two antimyosins revealed striking variations in reactivity among ventricular muscle fibers, reactive fibers being more numerous in the left compared to the right ventricle and in subendocardial compared to subepicardial layers. The response of the ventricular myocardium changed during development: all fibers were stained in the newborn rat, whereas most fibers were unreactive in 1-month-old animals. The number of reactive fibers increased again in subsequent stages leading to a mixed pattern in adult animals. The normal mixed pattern of reactivity was transformed into a uniformly positive pattern in hypertensive rats 2 months after surgery. This complete transformation was observed in 20 out of 23 hypertensive animals examined. These findings indicate that the two antimyosins cross-react with a particular type of ventricular myosin heavy chain, whose distribution varies in different muscle cells and whose relative concentration changes during development and during cardiac hypertrophy induced by systemic hypertension. We suggest that differences in pressure load may be responsible for both regional variations in isomyosin distribution and for isomyosin changes in hypertensive animals.