The chromosome of phage φX174 encodes 11 proteins consisting of a total of more than 2300 amino acids, even though the size of its genome predicts that it should be able to code for only 1795 amino acids. The reason for this discrepancy is __________.
A. enhancers
B. overlapping reading frames
C. alternative splicing
D. frameshift mutations
because due to presence of these overlapping regions the Start codons in different reading frames generate different proteins (polypeptides) from the same DNA sequence.