TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - The Human Retroviruses A1 - Longo, Dan L. A1 - Fauci, Anthony S. A2 - Jameson, J. Larry A2 - Fauci, Anthony S. A2 - Kasper, Dennis L. A2 - Hauser, Stephen L. A2 - Longo, Dan L. A2 - Loscalzo, Joseph PY - 2018 T2 - Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 20e AB - The retroviruses, which make up a large family (Retroviridae), infect mainly vertebrates. These viruses have a unique replication cycle whereby their genetic information is encoded by RNA rather than DNA. Retroviruses contain an RNA-dependent DNA polymerase (a reverse transcriptase) that directs the synthesis of a DNA form of the viral genome after infection of a host cell. The designation retrovirus denotes that information in the form of RNA is transcribed into DNA in the host cell—a sequence that overturned a central dogma of molecular biology: that information passes unidirectionally from DNA to RNA to protein. The observation that RNA was the source of genetic information in the causative agents of certain animal tumors led to a number of paradigm-shifting biologic insights regarding not only the direction of genetic information passage but also the viral etiology of certain cancers and the concept of oncogenes as normal host genes scavenged and altered by a viral vector. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/28 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1160014216 ER -