Reverse Transcription and Integration -Virology Lectures 2019 #9:

Vincent Racaniello 109K subscribers

The discovery of reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that produces DNA from RNA, revolutionized biology and shattered its central dogma. In this lecture we discuss the discovery of reverse transcriptase, the mechanism of reverse transcription and integration, and its role in the reproduction cycles of retroviruses and hepatitis B virus. We also introduce retroelements, mobile DNA sequences that move about the genome through the action of reverse transcriptase. They constitute a remarkable 42% of the human genome.