Rotavirus infection is the most common cause of severe infantile gastroenteritis worldwide. In vivo, rotavirus exhibits a marked tropism for the differentiated enterocytes of the intestinal epithelium. In vitro, differentiated and undifferentiated intestinal cells can be infected. We observed that rotavirus infection of the human intestinal epithelial Caco-2 cells induces cytoskeleton alterations as a function of cell differentiation. The vimentin network disorganization detected in undifferentiated Caco-2 cells was not found in fully differentiated cells. In contrast, differentiated Caco-2 cells presented Ca
2؉-dependent microtubule disassembly and Ca 2؉ -independent cytokeratin 18 rearrangement, which both require viral replication. We propose that these structural alterations could represent the first manifestations of rotavirus-infected enterocyte injury leading to functional perturbations and then to diarrhea.Rotaviruses, members of the Reoviridae family, are recognized as the most important cause of viral gastroenteritis in young children. Although much is known about their replication and maturation processes, the pathophysiologic mechanisms by which rotavirus infection induces diarrhea remain unclear. Cytoskeleton alterations could be an important stage in rotavirus-induced intestinal epithelial cell injury. Several studies have described the interactions of rotavirus with the cytoskeleton in MA104 (13, 24), CV-1 (40), or BHK21 (27) unpolarized cell lines. Cytoskeleton alteration was also observed in a rotavirus-infected neuronal cell line (41). Whereas the cells on the sides of microvilli, which do not totally display the morphologic and functional characteristics of mature enterocytes, can be infected by rotavirus, mature enterocytes on tips of the villi constitute the human rotavirus main target cells (8,9). In order to approach the in vivo situation and to gain further insights into the pathophysiologic mechanisms of rotavirus infection, we and others have used the human intestinal epithelial cell lines 15,17,35) and 21,30,33,34). Since rotavirus can infect both undifferentiated and differentiated Caco-2 cells (16,18,35), this cell line, which spontaneously differentiates in culture, represents, like HT-29 cells, an attractive model to study the mechanisms of pathogenicity of rotavirus as a function of cell differentiation. It was reported by Michelangeli et al. (25) that the OSU strain of porcine rotavirus leads to an elevation in intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca 2ϩ ] i ) in MA104 cells. Using differentiated Caco-2 cells, which display many of the morphological and functional properties of mature enterocytes (22, 31), we recently reported that the simian rhesus rotavirus strain RRV induces an increase in [Ca 2ϩ ] i which is responsible for microvillar F-actin disassembly (5). This alteration is concomitant with a decrease in the activity and apical expression of the brush border-associated hydrolase sucrase-isomaltase (SI), which results from a profound perturbation in the intracellular...