Thread: Drug resistance of viruses

I read in my chemistry book that only DNA has the capability of transmitting hereditary traits and RNA can not.Then how the viruses are evolving to resist drugs invented by us? They have only RNA in their system.Though there are DNA viruses e.g. chickenpox virus,small pox virus.But wikipedia says reverse transcribing viruses or retro viruses can evolve and resist drugs just by having only RNA.How is this possible?

Originally Posted by charvaka

I read in my chemistry book that only DNA has the capability of transmitting hereditary traits and RNA can not.

You've either got an incredibly badly written textbook or you've misread it somehow.

Viruses are the only organisms around today that are known to have RNA genomes. In fact, RNA genomes evolve rapidly as compared to DNA-based genomes. If you think about it, if RNA genomes could not carry hereditary information then there could be no RNA viruses.