(virology) Removal of the start of a strand of host cell RNA to serve as the 5' cap of viral mRNA.
2011 October 25, Tsutomu Fujimura, Rosa Esteban, “Cap-snatching mechanism in yeast L-A double-stranded RNA virus”, in PNAS, volume 108, number 43, →DOI:
Influenza virus furnishes its mRNA with this structure by a cap-snatching mechanism, in which the viral polymerase cleaves host mRNA endonucleolytically 10–13 nucleotides from the 5′ end and utilizes the capped fragment as a primer to synthesize viral transcripts.
2014 November 19, Stefan Reich et al., “Structural insight into cap-snatching and RNA synthesis by influenza polymerase”, in Nature[1], volume 516, pages 361–366:
Influenza virus polymerase uses a capped primer, derived by "cap-snatching" from host pre-messenger RNA, to transcribe its RNA genome into mRNA and a stuttering mechanism to generate the poly(A) tail.
