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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...