Virus Ploidy

[mrmandrake]

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Quick question guys,

In First Aid it says that all viruses are haploid except for retroviruses. For those viruses that are double stranded DNA, does this mean that there two identical strands floating around? I always thought that they were complementary, which means they can't be identical. I tried to Wikipedia this stuff but couldn't come up with an answer. Anyone remember learning this in their classes? Thanks.

 

[mrmandrake]

I just thought about it some more. If the strands are complementary in a dsDNA, that would make them haploid. If they are two strands of idential RNA (which is the case for retroviruses), that would make them diploid. Scratch the question above.

 

[bakanoisha]

dsRNA is RNA + complement, but it's still haploid. Diploid means two copies with the same polarity.

Retroviruses have +RNA, so to me that means they have two copies of +RNA, neither of which has it's compliment.

My .02 on the matter 🙂

 

[mrmandrake]

Yea you're right. That's what I was trying to say with my second post ... although you were a lot clearer