The genomes of all influenza viruses are composed of eight single-stranded RNA segments (Figure 1). These RNAs are negative-sense molecules, meaning that they must be copied into positive-sense ...

It is a near sphere of protein (cross section shown) inside a fatty membrane that protects a twisting strand of RNA--a molecule that holds the virus's genetic code. Proteins called "S" form spikes ...

Viruses, then, may have existed before bacteria, archaea, or eukaryotes (Figure 4; Prangishvili et al. 2006). Most biologists now agree that the very first replicating molecules consisted of RNA ...

Credit: Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54263-5 Viruses propagate throughout the body by infecting cells with their RNA, and if scientists can tag that viral RNA with the ...

A virus is, arguably, the smallest possible living thing. It is a bundle of DNA or RNA bound up in a minuscule core, sometimes surrounded by a sturdy envelope and sometimes not. It can reproduce, but ...

A team of scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg and the University of Regensburg has unveiled insights into how HIV-1, the virus responsible ...

The RNA can then be cross-referenced against large ... the location of the open reading frame seen in human hepatitis D virus (Figure 1). On top of this, certain sequences of the avian hepatitis ...

It is also useful for the detection of target region variants, which gives additional protection from false-negative results that arise owing to natural variants of RNA viruses. [28] ...