Polysomally Protected Viruses

TL;DR

This paper explores the hypothetical concept of polysomally protected viruses, proposing mechanisms for their operation, detection via ribosome profiling, and analyzing recent ribosome profile data for ambigrammatic narnaviruses.

Contribution

It introduces the idea of polysomally protected viruses, distinguishes two types based on ribosome coverage, and links recent data to the proposed model, suggesting a new viral protection mechanism.

Findings

Ribosome profiles of ambigrammatic narnaviruses support the type 2 virus model.

Type 2 viruses may have evolved ambigrammatic properties for protection.

Detection of such viruses could be achieved through ribosome profiling techniques.

Abstract

It is conceivable that an RNA virus could use a polysome, that is, a string of ribosomes covering the RNA strand, to protect the genetic material from degradation inside a host cell. This paper discusses how such a virus might operate, and how its presence might be detected by ribosome profiling. There are two possible forms for such a polysomally protected virus, depending upon whether just the forward strand or both the forward and complementary strands can be encased by ribosomes (these will be termed type 1 and type 2, respectively). It is argued that in the type 2 case the viral RNA would evolve an ambigrammatic property, whereby the viral genes are free of stop codons in a reverse reading frame (with forward and reverse codons aligned). Recent observations of ribosome profiles of ambigrammatic narnavirus sequences are consistent with our predictions for the type 2 case.