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[–]Nombre27 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That doesn't change the validity of what I said. RNA can in fact alter DNA, and there are multiple mechanisms that achieve this.

As far as the damage viruses are capable of doing, it's their genome that enables all of it, so it is a big contributory factor. Without it they likely wouldn't be able to multiply and continue infecting more cells, amongst the other things that their genome and proteins may do.