The Virus Taxonomy

Viruses are not like animals or plants, in the sense that viruses do not exhibit the typical signs of life, as stated in the previous post. Virrus Taxonomy focuses on family, genus and species, though not all viruses are assigned order, family and genus. There are 2 systems of virus taxonomy, the Lwolf's Scheme for classification, which makes use of the physical properties of the virus, and Baltimre's System for classification which is based on the viral genome and its relationship to messenger RNA, abbreviated as mRNA.

Baltimore Classification System

The Baltimore classification as previoulsy stated, is based on the viral genome. As shown in the picture, viruses are grouped into 7 groups. 

The first group contains viruses that contain positive sense double stranded DNA, (+) dsDNA. which is then translated to mRNA which then codes the protein. 

Group 2, where positive sense single strand DNA is transcripted to (+/-) dsDNA before it is then translated to mRNA. 

Group 3, dsRNA is translated mRNA.

Group 4 is where (+)RNA is transcripted to (-)RNA before it is then transcripted into mRNA.

Group 5 is where (-)ssRNA is transcripted to mRNA.

Group 6 is where (+)ssRNA is reverse transcripted before it becomes mRNA.

Group 7 is where (+/-)dsDNA becomes a single strand before it undergoes reverse transcription before it finally becomes mRNA.

That's all for this post.