After appearance of advanced CPE in the virusinfected cells, different morphogenetic stages of the grouper iridovirus were observed in cytoplasm.The virus particles were never observed inside the nucleus. At the early stages of virus infection, the nucleocapsids were presented inside a cytoplasmic vacuole which were being enlarged by fusion with intracellular membranes (Fig. 1). The release of viral nucleoid materials into the cytoplasm was not observed.
During the course of virus replication, the different stages of virus self-assembly were detected in the cytoplasm.