Figure 4.

Mechanisms of replicative and nonreplicative RNA recombination. (a) The replicative mechanism of copy-choice. The replication complex pauses during the synthesis of the complementary strand of the RNA donor (in red) and dissociates from the RNA donor template. Then, the incomplete nascent RNA strand interacts with the acceptor RNA (in blue) where the replication complex reassembles and the synthesis of the complementary strand resumes. The complementary strand is indicated by lighter colors. (b) The nonreplicative mechanism of breakage-ligation. The two parental RNA molecules are degraded, and then the two fragments generated are covalently linked.