Virology/On the Genomes of Viruses First, lets have a short
introduction to how the instructions of biological processes are
stored, accessed, and executed. For all known life, genetic
information is stored in the DNA of the organism's genome. DNA
has four different types of bases, that can be arranged in a
specific sequence that encodes information (we have 26 letters
in English, 10 digits in decimal, and our computers have ones
and zeros but life only needs four to encode almost all of its
complexity). DNA pretty much only functions as information
storage, so it needs to be stable and protected from dramatic
changes in order to serve its purpose but it doesn't do much
else besides that. Since DNA can't do much on its own, RNA acts
as an intermediate that can carry the information of DNA (so the
information can be used) and it also has more functionality at
the expense of stability (it is broken apart all the time). RNA
also has four bases (that can pair up with DNA bases - copying
the information), but it s