Reverse transcriptase

Reverse transcriptase is an enzyme used to generate a complementary strand of DNA (cDNA) on an RNA template, a process called reverse transcription.

History
Howard Temin in the 1960s proposed a hypothesis of a DNA intermediate in retroviral replication. Howard Temin and David Baltimore discovered independently the Reverse transcriptase enzyme and both, along with Renato Dulbecco, were recipients of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Applications
Reverse transcriptase has important applications in molecular biology, including reverse trancription-polymerase chain reaction and the compilation of cDNA libraries.