What is Reverse Transcription?
Topics Covered: Transcription, Reverse Transcription, Central Dogma of biology
Have you ever heard of reverse transcription? What about the central dogma of biology? In this post, we will be covering the idea of reverse transcription in biology, a fascinating field that has so many real world applications!
First, let’s start with the central dogma of biology. It sounds sophisticated, but it is a less complicated concept than it sounds! A central dogma of biology is a concept that genetic information stored in DNA gets turned into RNA through the process of transcription, which then gets turned into protein (through the process of translation). This idea that the flow of genetic information is unidirectional was first proposed in 1958 by Francis Crick, a discoverer of the DNA structure.
However, in the 1970s, a group of scientists discovered that some viruses, known as retroviruses, use RNA, not DNA to store genetic information! Why was this revolutionary? Well, when these retroviruses replicate themselves inside of another cell of the host organism, they have to convert their RNA to DNA. This means the flow of genetic information is not unidirectional like Crick proposed, but can also go in the opposite direction as well!
This idea immediately challenged the central dogma of biology, and scientists found that there are a group of new enzymes that convert the RNA of retroviruses into a complementary DNA (cDNA). These new enzymes were called reverse transcriptases because they go against Crick’s DNA-to-RNA flow of the central dogma! And this process of generating a copy of DNA from RNA is called reverse transcription. Reverse transcription is a recent field of study that is still studied by scientists and has a major impact on biotechnological and medical fields!
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