Northern Analysis of Viral Plus‐ and Minus‐Strand RNAs

AbstractReplication is a fundamental activity of viruses. Replication of positive‐sense RNA viruses involves the synthesis of complementary minus‐strand intermediates from the parental RNA template followed by synthesis of nascent plus strands. Negative‐sense RNA genome and double‐stranded RNA are copied into positive‐sense mRNA before translation. To detect and estimate the abundance of plus‐ and minus‐strand viral transcripts in the infected samples, northern analysis is the most commonly used method.