Viroids: Molecular Vestiges Of The RNA World
Saturday, May 16, 2009 - 23:14
in Biology & Nature
Viroids are unique systems for the study of RNA structure, function and evolution. They are the minimal RNA replicons characterized so far their genome is ten-fold smaller than that the smallest known vius RNA and they can therefore be considered in a certain sense at the frontier of life. Despite being only composed by a single-stranded circular RNA of 246-401 nt not encoding any protein, viroids contain sufficient information to infect some host plants, to manipulate their gene expression for producing a viroid progeny and, as a consequence, to incite in most cases specific diseases.