How do you tell if virus is RNA/DNA/ss or ds?

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Sammy1024

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I read that viruses can have RNA or DNA and it can be double strand or single strand. How do you know which options it is, depending on the situation?

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Umm...by memorization? Though this would be beyond what's required for the MCAT.
What kind of situation are you talking about? Because that's typically something that has to be determined experimentally, not a logical conclusion that you would reason out.

There are some common characteristics of each (i.e. RNA viruses typically have much higher mutation rates than DNA viruses), but they're not hard and fast rules and sometimes characteristics overlap.
 
I believe i had a practice question that said a human and a bacteria are infected by a virus (could be completely wrong) what type of genetic material does the virus have?

I picked dna; rna but the answer key was off set and had skipped that question.
 
I believe i had a practice question that said a human and a bacteria are infected by a virus (could be completely wrong) what type of genetic material does the virus have?

I picked dna; rna but the answer key was off set and had skipped that question.
There aren't known viruses that can infect both humans and bacteria.
Perhaps if you can find the original question then we can clear it up for you...
 
I read that viruses can have RNA or DNA and it can be double strand or single strand. How do you know which options it is, depending on the situation?

If there was something else is the passage it could give you more information. Normally ratios of ATCGU will give you all the info you need to solve this problem.

If you have U it's RNA and if you get strange ratios where there are more A's than T's etc then you know it's SS.
 
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