A short biased history of RNA viruses
- Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine, University of Geneva Medical School, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland
- Corresponding author: daniel.kolakofsky{at}unige.ch
This extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
Among its many roles, RNA can also act as a viral genome. In the majority of cases these genomes are single-stranded RNA, and both the form that can be directly translated by ribosomes (plus strands) and that which is the complement of the mRNA (minus strands) are used. As a mark of RNA's versatility as genetic material, there are also “ambisense” genomes where the same ssRNA has regions that are (+) strand or (−) strand, as well as dsRNA genomes.
RNA viruses were discovered about the same time as a series of momentous events in molecular biology; mRNA was discovered as the immediate carrier of genetic information for protein synthesis, the genetic code was quickly deciphered with Khorana's synthetic trinucleotides, and a modified form of methionine (N-formyl-methionine) that minimally resembled a peptide was found to initiate protein synthesis in bacteria. To study protein synthesis in more detail, RNAs of random …
