Refer to the treatments listed below to answer the following questions.
You isolate an infectious substance that is capable of causing disease in plants, but you do not know whether the infectious agent is a bacterium, virus, viroid, or prion. You have four methods at your disposal that you can use to analyze the substance in order to determine the nature of the infectious agent.
I. treating the substance with nucleases that destroy all nucleic acids
and then determining whether it is still infectious
II. filtering the substance to remove all elements smaller than what can
be easily seen under a light microscope
III. culturing the substance by itself on nutritive medium, away from
any plant cells
IV. treating the sample with proteases that digest all proteins and then
determining whether it is still infectious
-Which treatment could definitively determine whether or not the component is a viroid?
A) I
B) II
C) III
D) IV
E) first II and then III

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Viroids are infectious agents that consist solely of a short strand of circular, single-stranded RNA without a protein coat. Therefore, treating the substance with nucleases, which destroy all nucleic acids, would eliminate the infectious agent if it were a viroid, as their infectivity is entirely dependent on their RNA.

Refer to the Treatments Listed Below to Answer the Following