RNA

Planaria and mollusks yield the biggest RNA virus genomes

The development of high throughput nucleic acid sequencing tools has rapidly increased the pace of virus discovery in the past 20 years. Yet in that time, while the largest DNA genomes have increased by nearly ten times, the largest known RNA viral genome has only increase in size by a tenth. This situation has now …

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TWiV 498: Salivating at ASM Microbe

Vincent, Kathy and Rich travel to ASM Microbe 2018 in Atlanta where they speak with Stacy Horner and Ken Stapleford about their careers and their research. <span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”></span>&lt;span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;” class=”mce_SELRES_start”&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&amp;lt;span data-mce-type=”bookmark” style=”display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: …

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Animal viruses with separately packaged RNA segments

There are many examples of viruses with segmented genomes – like influenza viruses – but these genomes segments are packaged in  one virus particle. Sometimes the genome segments are separately packaged in virus particles. Such multicomponent viruses are commonly found to infect plants and fungi, but only recently have examples of such viruses that infect animals …

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Top secret, viruses with RNA genomes!

Today it is well known that viruses may contain DNA (poxvirus, mimivirus) or RNA (influenza virus, Zika virus), but for many years it was thought that genomes were only made of DNA. The surprise at finding only RNA in a virus is plainly evident in a 1953 letter from Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor to James D. Watson (pictured, Cold Spring Harbor Archives …

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What does transfection mean?

I have always had a problem with the use of the word transfection to mean anything other than the introduction of viral DNA into cells (illustrated for poliovirus). An examination of the origins of the word suggests that such use might be acceptable. The introduction of foreign DNA into cells is called DNA-mediated transformation to distinguish …

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