Summary The presence of virus-specific polypeptides in bovine viral diarrhoea-mucosal disease (BVD) virus-infected bovine cells was studied by radiolabelling in the presence of a hypertonic initiation block (HIB) and by analysis by SDS-PAGE. These experiments were complemented by radioimmunoprecipitations with anti-BVD hyperimmune serum of infected cells labelled under isotonic conditions. A total of 12 polypeptides (M r 165, 135, 118, 80, 75, 62, 56 to 58, 48, 37, 32, 35 and 19, all × 10-3) were identified in infected cells. Time course analysis of the induction of the viral polypeptides indicated that they could be detected as early as 4 h post-infection and their synthesis reached a plateau between 12 and 20 h post-infection. The most abundant polypeptides were the ones that could be detected earliest. HIB was found to be an excellent adjunct to existing techniques in the identification of viral polypeptides. Seven of these polypeptides had not been reported previously. This is the first report of the direct detection of BVD virus-induced polypeptides in infected cells without the aid of immunoprecipitation. The sum of the molecular masses of these polypeptides is greater than the coding capacity of the genome; therefore precursor-product relationships must exist between these polypeptides.