And another lesson we discussed the fact that single-stranded RNA viruses can have a positive or negative sense to their Jeanneau this little tidbit is critical when it comes to understanding their viral replication strategies I like to think of positive sense single-stranded RNA viruses as an Alka-Seltzer tablet in the cytoplasm of the self as the water in the cup or host cell I know it sounds weird but that way you'll remember it better when the tablet is dropped into the water for the positive sense single-stranded RNA virus penetrate into the cell cytoplasm all sorts of little round bubbles start being produced instantaneously those little bubbles in the water are the proteins being produced by the host cells machinery what happens is that the positive sense single-stranded RNA strand is of the same sense as mRNA