You believe that you have isolated a new strain of positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus and set about studying it in your laboratory. Which of the following lines of evidence would most strongly support your hypothesis that the virus is a [+]ssRNA?
A) The virions are diploid.
B) You sequence the bases in the viral RNA and the mRNA and find them to be antiparallel.
C) Introducing a protease inhibitor causes the virus to stop producing proteins and reproducing.
D) Introducing a reverse transcriptase inhibitor slows down the growth of the virus.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Positive-sense single-stranded RNA viruses ([+]ssRNA) directly use their RNA as mRNA to produce proteins. A protease inhibitor would interfere with the processing of viral proteins necessary for the virus to reproduce, supporting the hypothesis that it is a [+]ssRNA virus.

You Believe That You Have Isolated a New Strain of Positive-Sense