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.

可以想象，RNA 病毒可以使用多核糖体，即覆盖 RNA 链的一串核糖体，以保护遗传物质免于在宿主细胞内降解。本文讨论了这种病毒可能如何运作，以及如何通过核糖体分析检测到它的存在。这种受多核糖体保护的病毒有两种可能的形式，这取决于核糖体是仅包含正向链还是正向和互补链都可以被核糖体包裹（这些将分别称为 1 型和 2 型）。有人认为，在类型 2 的情况下，病毒 RNA 会演变成一个歧义的特性，即病毒基因在反向阅读框中没有终止密码子（正向和反向密码子对齐）。最近对 ambigrammatic narnavirus 序列的核糖体谱的观察与我们对 2 型病例的预测一致。