History
Reverse transcriptase was discovered by Howard Temin at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in RSV virions, and independently isolated by David Baltimore in 1970 at MIT from two RNA tumour viruses: R-MLV and again RSV. For their achievements, both shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Renato Dulbecco).
The idea of reverse transcription was very unpopular at first as it contradicted the central dogma of molecular biology which states that DNA is transcribed into RNA which is then translated into proteins. However, in 1970 when the scientists Howard Temin and David Baltimore both independently discovered the enzyme responsible for reverse transcription, named reverse transcriptase, the possibility that genetic information could be passed on in this manner was finally accepted.
Read more about this topic: Reverse Transcriptase
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)