ABSTRACT
The RNA phages of the Leviviridae family were discovered in 1961, at the time when the formation and rapid progress of modern molecular biology occurred. They contributed markedly to the elucidation of the fine mechanisms of translation and replication and to the final deciphering of the genetic code. Moreover, the RNA phages were at the origin of the ideas directed to the general mechanisms of the translational and transcriptional regulation in the macromolecular synthesis. This chapter begins with the short history of the discovery of the RNA phages and presents the maximally full list of the RNA phages described up to now. This chapter presents a short general story of the RNA phage properties, such as genome structure, growth cycle, male specificity, antigenicity, composition and icosahedral character of virions. The chapter explains how the RNA phages provided the scientific community with highly-purified RNA, contributed to the progress in the genome sequencing by the first full-length genome sequence, initiated the studies on the diversity of bacterial pili and host-phage interaction modes, as well as presented the first attempts in the reconstitution of infectious virions.
