An RNA virus is a virus that has RNA (ribonucleic acid) as its genetic material.

This nucleic acid

is usually single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) but may be double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). Notable
human diseases caused by RNA viruses include the common cold, influenza, SARS, MERS,
COVID-19, Dengue Virus, hepatitis C, hepatitis E, West Nile fever, Ebola virus disease, rabies,
polio, mumps, and measles.

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) classifies RNA viruses as those
that belong to Group III, Group IV or Group V of the Baltimore classification system of
classifying viruses and does not consider viruses with DNA intermediates in their life cycle as
RNA viruses. Viruses with RNA as their genetic material which also include DNA intermediates
in their replication cycle are called retroviruses, and comprise Group VI of the Baltimore
classification. Notable human retroviruses include HIV-1 and HIV-2, the cause of the disease
AIDS.

All RNA viruses encoding an RNA-directed RNA polymerase, known as of May 2020, form a
monophyletic group now known as the realm Riboviria. The majority of such RNA viruses fall
into the kingdom Orthornavirae and the rest have a positioning not yet defined. The realm does
not contain all RNA viruses: Deltavirus, Asunviroidae, and Pospiviroidae are taxa of RNA
viruses that have been mistakenly included in 2019, but corrected in 2020.

Single-stranded RNA viruses and RNA SenseEdit

RNA viruses can be further classified according to the sense or polarity of their RNA into
negative-sense and positive-sense, or ambisense RNA viruses. Positive-sense viral RNA is
similar to mRNA and thus can be immediately translated by the host cell. Negative-sense viral
RNA is complementary to mRNA and thus must be converted to positive-sense RNA by an
RNA-dependent RNA polymerase before translation. Purified RNA of a positive-sense virus can
directly cause infection though it may be less infectious than the whole virus particle. In contrast,
purified RNA of a negative-sense virus is not infectious by itself as it needs to be transcribed
into positive-sense RNA; each virion can be transcribed to several positive-sense RNAs.
Ambisense RNA viruses resemble negative-sense RNA viruses, except they translate genes
from their negative and positive strands.
Double-stranded RNA viruses

Structure of the reovirus virion

The double-stranded (ds)RNA viruses represent a diverse group of viruses that vary widely in
host range (humans, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria), genome segment number (one to
twelve), and virion organization (Triangulation number, capsid layers, spikes, turrets, etc.).
Members of this group include the rotaviruses, which are the most common cause of
gastroenteritis in young children, and picobirnaviruses, which are the most common virus in
fecal samples of both humans and animals with or without signs of diarrhea. Bluetongue virus is
an economically important pathogen that infects cattle and sheep. In recent years, progress has
been made in determining atomic and subnanometer resolution structures of a number of key
viral proteins and virion capsids of several dsRNA viruses, highlighting the significant parallels in
the structure and replicative processes of many of these viruses.