Telomerase and retrotransposons: Reverse transcriptases that shaped genomes

摘要

These words accompanied two articles describing the discovery of RNA-dependent DNA poly-merase, now known as reverse transcriptase (RT), in the virions of RNA tumor viruses. RT activity was recognized independently by David Baltimore (1) and Howard Temin and Satoshi Mizutani (2). In five printed pages these authors collectively challenged the unidirectionality of macromolecular synthesis, from DNA to RNA to protein, the central dogma of molecular biology.