The UL24 family of proteins is widely conserved among herpesviruses. We demonstrated previously that UL24 of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) is important for the dispersal of nucleolin from nucleolar foci throughout the nuclei of infected cells. Furthermore, the N-terminal portion of UL24 localizes to nuclei and can disperse nucleolin in the absence of any other viral proteins. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that highly conserved residues in UL24 are important for the ability of the protein to modify the nuclear distribution of nucleolin. We constructed a panel of substitution mutations in UL24 and tested their effects on nucleolin staining patterns. We found that modified UL24 proteins exhibited a range of subcellular distributions. Mutations associated with a wild-type localization pattern for UL24 correlated with high levels of nucleolin dispersal. Interestingly, mutations targeting two regions, namely, within the first homology domain and overlapping or near the previously identified PD-(D/E)XK endonuclease motif, caused the most altered UL24 localization pattern and the most drastic reduction in its ability to disperse nucleolin. Viral mutants corresponding to the substitutions G121A and E99A/K101A both exhibited a syncytial plaque phenotype at 39°C. vUL24-E99A/K101A replicated to lower titers than did vUL24-G121A or KOS. Furthermore, the E99A/K101A mutation caused the greatest impairment of HSV-1-induced dispersal of nucleolin. Our results identified residues in UL24 that are critical for the ability of UL24 to alter nucleoli and further support the notion that the endonuclease motif is important for the function of UL24 during infection.The UL24 protein is conserved throughout the Herpesviridae family, and to the best of our knowledge, a UL24 homolog has been identified in all Herpesvirales genomes sequenced to date with the exception of the channel catfish virus (9, 10, 19). UL24 of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) is required for efficient virus replication both in vitro and in vivo and for reactivation from latency in a mouse model of ocular infection (18). UL24 is one of the few HSV-1 genes, along with gB, gK, and UL20, in which mutations have been identified that cause the formation of syncytial plaques (2,7,34,36,39). The UL24-associated syncytial phenotype is only partially penetrant at 37°C but is fully penetrant at 39°C. Indications are that gK and UL20 have an inhibitory effect on the formation of syncytia (1), while certain mutations in gB entrain an uncontrolled fusogenic activity (11,13,15).UL24 is a highly basic protein of 269 amino acids that is expressed with leaky-late kinetics (31). Five homology domains (HDs), which consist of stretches of amino acids with a high percentage of identity between homologs, are present in the UL24 open reading frame (ORF) (19). In addition, a PD-(D/ E)XK endonuclease motif has been identified that falls within the HDs (20); however, a role for this motif has yet to be demonstrated. In infected cells, UL24 is detected in the nucleus and the cytoplasm a...