Unlike the other family of viroids, Pospiviroidae, Avsunviroidae are thought to replicate via a symmetrical rolling mechanism.

A second rolling circle mechanism forms a positive strand which is also cleaved by ribozyme activity and then ligated to become circular.

[2] Predictions of structure have suggested that they exist either as rod-shaped molecules with regions of base pairing causing formation of some hairpin loops or have branched configurations.

[2][3] The family has four stretches of conserved nucleotides, guuuc, uc, ucag, ac from 5' to 3', plus their Watson-Crick pairings on the other end of the loop.

[2] The lack of a long, central conserved region makes Avsunviroidae harder to identify than Pospiviroidae.