Towards the system of viruses

On the basis of certain postulates, requirements have been formulated to be met by the modes of transfer of genetic information (replication and transcription of genome) in viruses, and ways of constructing theoretically possible genetic chains, i.e. the schemes illustrating consecutive stages of information transfer, have been suggested. As the first step, only the simplest chains are dealt with in the present work. The paths of genetic information transfer are grouped into a system comprising 35 classes, 17 superclasses and 6 types. All the studied viruses may perhaps be placed into 8 of these 35 classes. The rest of the classes may correspond to yet unknown viruses. Depending on assumptions made, the existence of some of these viruses is more probable than that of others. On the other hand, some ways of information transfer may be forbidden for reasons as yet unknown.Many important properties of viruses are interconnected and are largely determined by the path of information transfer involved. The correlation allows many known properties of known viruses to be systematized and some features of known and unknown viruses to be predicted.