Figure 2.

Three proposed molecular mechanisms for RNA recombination

(A) Similarity-essential recombination, where the polymerase dissociates, and the two parental strands hybridize in regions of high homology, allowing the polymerase to switch templates.

(B) Similarity-nonessential recombination, where the polymerase dissociates because of RNA secondary structure.

(C) Similarity-assisted recombination, where both homology and secondary structure promote recombination. Adapted from Nagy and Simon.⁶⁷.