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
-If you already knew that the infectious agent was either a viroid or a prion, which treatment would allow you to distinguish between these two possibilities?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Treatment I would allow you to distinguish between a viroid and a prion because viroids are small, single-stranded RNA molecules, while prions are misfolded proteins. Nucleases would destroy the RNA of the viroid, but would have no effect on the protein of the prion.

Refer to the Treatments Listed Below to Answer the Following