Concept


DNA was believed to be the sole medium for genetic information storage. Furthermore, Watson and Crick's central dogma assumed that information flowed "one-way" from DNA to RNA to protein. So it came as a surprise, when in 1981, it was discovered that some viruses store their genetic information in a chromosome made of RNA, rather than DNA. Even so, these viruses ultimately make proteins in the same way as higher organisms. During infection, the RNA code is first transcribed "back" to DNA — then to RNA to protein, according to the accepted scheme. The initial conversion of RNA to DNA — going in reverse of the central dogma — is called reverse transcription, and viruses that use this mechanism are classified as retroviruses. A specialized polymerase, reverse transcriptase, converts the single-stranded RNA into a complementary and double-stranded DNA molecule.

Animation


Hi, I’m David Baltimore. And, I'm Howard Temin. In the 70s, we were working on the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) and other viruses that can cause tumors. RSV is named after Peyton Rous. In 1911, he found that this virus causes tumors in chickens. Rous passed an extract from tumor cells over filters that excluded any material larger than a virus. This filtrate produced tumors when injected into healthy chickens. Since anything larger than a virus was filtered out, the implications were that viruses caused tumors. But no one knew how the viruses worked to cause cancer. In the early 70's, I proposed that, during infection, tumor viruses integrate their DNA into the host cell DNA. However, this would prove a problem for RSV, which stores its genetic information as RNA, not DNA. David and I both became interested in how RSV might use its RNA as a template to make DNA. To figure this all out, I stripped the virus of its outer coat and used the inner core in a cell-free system. I added all the nucleotides; thymine was the radioactive tracer. The viral components in this cell-free system produced radioactive DNA. I knew the radioactive product was DNA because it was not affected by RNase. But the product was destroyed by the enzyme DNase. I did a few more experiments. I incubated the viral cores with trypsin — an enzyme that digests protein. I then added nucleotides to the trypsin-digested viral cores. I did not get any DNA product. Similarly, if I added RNase at the beginning of the reaction ... ... and then added nucleotides ... ... there also was no DNA product. I concluded that RSV has a special enzyme that uses RNA as a template to make DNA. I initially named this enzyme "RNA-dependent DNA polymerase," but it later became known as reverse transcriptase. Howard Temin independently did a similar set of experiments. Crick's Central Dogma — where information flows from DNA to RNA to protein — does not apply to viruses like RSV. A reverse flow of information from RNA to DNA happen first, and these viruses thus became known as retroviruses. Our discovery of reverse transcriptase helped to clarify the life cycle of RSV and other retroviruses. Retroviruses consist of an outer envelope, an inner capsid, and a central core containing the RNA template and the reverse transcriptase enzyme. When the virus infects a cell, the viral envelope fuses with the host cell membrane and the capsid disassembles — releasing the RNA and reverse transcriptase into the cytoplams of the host cell. The reverse transcriptase then synthesizes a complementary DNA strand using the viral RNA as a template. Then the enzyme degrades the RNA and synthesizes a second DNA strand. This DNA makes it way into the nucleus and integrates into a chromosome of the host cell. The typical retrovirus RNA looks like this: it has two ends called long terminal repeats (LTR), and only three genes — gag, pol, and env. The LTRs are sequences that help the virus integrate into the host genome. Once integrated,the virus uses the host replication machinery to produce RNA - containing the LTR's and genes between them - and the other viral proteins. pol codes for the reverse transcriptase. gag encodes the capsid and other core proteins. ...while env produces components of the outer viral envelope. The proteins are then assembled into a viral particle with the viral RNA inside. Once it leaves the cell, the virus is capable of infecting other cells. Tumor viruses, like RSV, have picked up an additional gene; called an oncogene, src contributues to malignancy.

Gallery


In 1959, David Baltimore was one of Cold Spring Harbor's first undergraduate research students.
Howard Temin, 1964.
Howard Temin in his office at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1973.
Howard Temin being interviewed after winning the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
Howard Temin, 1987.
(1 of 4) A series of electromicrographs showing the infection of H-9 cells with the MN strain of HIV-1 virus. Magnification including computer enhancements are approximately 100,000 times. A mature round virus particle is sitting next to the cell ready for infection. Note the visible inner core.
(2 of 4) Virus particle is fusing with the cell membrane and about to empty its contents into the cell. Note the visible inner core.
(3 of 4) Virus particle budding out from the cell. Although similar to the previous micrograph, the inner core is not as dense and therefore this is an "immature" viron budding out as opposed to a mature virus fusing in to infect a cell.

Audio/Video


Audio Glossary

Retrovirus

Video Interviews

David Baltimore

Currently President of Caltech University, David Baltimore did work in virology in the late '60s that led to the discovery of reverse transcriptase, and new insight into the life cycle of retroviruses.

Clip 1 (0:53)
Viruses and the genesis of the reverse transcriptase idea.

Clip 2 (0:58)
Isolating reverse transcriptase — the experiment.

Clip 3 (0:24)
Reactions to Howard Temin's idea of retroviral RNA being transcribed into DNA before integration.

Clip 4 (1:35)
Definition of retrovirus.

Clip 5 (0:53)
Use of retroviruses in genetic therapy.

Biography


 

David Baltimore, Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell.

DAVID BALTIMORE (1938-)

David Baltimore was born in New York City. As a high school student, he participated in the Jackson Memorial Laboratory research program in Bar Harbor, Maine. It was his first experience working in a biology research lab and interacting with scientists, and it was the start of his research career.

Baltimore studied biology and chemistry at Swarthmore College. In 1959, the summer of his third year at Swarthmore, Baltimore became one of the first undergraduate research students at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He worked with George Streisinger who introduced him to the "new" field of molecular biology.

After graduating in 1960, Baltimore went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to do a Ph.D. in biophysics. He became interested in animal viruses and in 1961 left MIT and went to Rockefeller University to continue graduate work with Richard Franklin. Franklin taught a course on animal viruses that Baltimore had taken in Cold Spring Harbor. Franklin had experimental evidence that showed how certain viruses seem to shut down synthesis of cellular RNA and induce synthesis of viral RNA.

As a post-doctorate, Baltimore continued to study viral systems, specifically viral RNA synthesis. In 1965, Baltimore became a research associate at the Salk Institute where he worked on poliovirus. He found that the RNA genome of poliovirus became the mRNA message once it entered the cytoplasm.

In 1968, Baltimore accepted a position as an associate professor of microbiology at MIT. By this time, he began to suspect that not all RNA viruses replicated in the same manner. Baltimore knew about Howard Temin's DNA provirus hypothesis that viral RNA was a template to make viral DNA, which then became the template for the synthesis of progeny viral RNA. In the '60s, this was a radical idea and a clear departure from the accepted Central Dogma of DNA to RNA to protein. Given his own suspicions, Baltimore thought Temin's theory was logical and was able to prove it by finding the RNA-dependent DNA polymerase, later named reverse transcriptase in RSV and in a mouse tumor virus. Baltimore, Temin and Renato Dulbecco shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell.

Baltimore became full professor of biology at MIT in 1972. From 1982-1990, Baltimore was a director, and one of the founders of MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. In 1990, he moved to New York to become president at one of his alma maters, Rockefeller University. After a year as president he stayed at Rockefeller as a professor for three more years. Currently, Baltimore is the president of California Institute of Technology and has been since 1998.

HOWARD MARTIN TEMIN (1934-1994)

Howard Temin was born in Philadelphia. His father was an attorney and his mother was involved in educational civic affairs. Temin was interested in biology and during high school, he was accepted into the summer research program at Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine. Temin spent four summers there learning about the world of biological research.

After high school, Temin went to Swarthmore College and majored in biology. In 1955, he went to graduate school at the California Institute of Technology. Although he started in biology, he became more interested in animal virology. His doctorate thesis was on work done on Rous sarcoma virus in Renato Dulbecco's laboratory. After his Ph.D. in 1959, he stayed in Dulbecco's lab for another year as a postdoctoral fellow. During this time, he developed his provirus theory, which hypothesized that RSV and other RNA viruses entered the cell and then made DNA copies of themselves before integrating into the host genome.

In 1960, he was offered an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During the next four years in his basement laboratory, Temin performed the experiments that proved his provirus theory. He published his results in 1964 and in 1975 shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with David Baltimore and Renato Dulbecco for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of the cell.

Temin stayed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and eventually became a full professor. In 1974 he also became an American Cancer Society Professor of Viral Oncology and Cell Biology. He was also on the editorial boards of several journals: Journal of Virology, Journal of Cellular Physiology, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Temin was a well-recognized figure around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. He walked or biked to and from work everyday along the same path following the lakeshore. In 1998, the University dedicated the Howard Temin Lakeshore Path in his honor.

Although Temin did not smoke, he died in 1994 from lung cancer.

Factoid

Links


 

Links

Retroviruses

This site from the University of Leiceister's Department of Microbiology and Immunology has detailed information about retroviruses. There is also a link to the Microbiology Video Library where you can download Quicktime video clips of HIV replication and maturation.

The Body

An AIDS and HIV information resource with lots of information about the disease. HIV is a retrovirus.

Bibliography

  • Baltimore, D., 1970, Viral RNA-dependent DNA Polymerase, Nature, 226: 1209-1211.

  • Baltimore, D., 1994, Howard Temin (1934-1994): The Fierce Scholar, Cell, 76: 967-968.

  • Baltimore, D., ed., 1977, Nobel Lectures in Molecular Biology 1933-1975, Elsevier North-Holland, Inc., New York.

  • Rous, P., 1911, A Sarcoma of the Fowl Transmissible by an Agent Separable from the Tumor Cells, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 13: 397-409.

Glossary


Retrovirus - A type of virus containing RNA as its genetic material. The RNA of the virus is translated into DNA, which inserts itself into an infected cell's own DNA. Retroviruses can cause many diseases, including some cancers and AIDS. Scientists, however, can also genetically modify benign retroviruses and use them in gene therapy to correct abnormal cells by introducing normal genes into them.

Children resemble their parents.
Genes come in pairs.
Genes don't blend.
Some genes are dominant.
Genetic inheritance follows rules.
Genes are real things.
All cells arise from pre-existing cells.
Sex cells have one set of chromosomes; body cells have two.
Specialized chromosomes determine gender.
Chromosomes carry genes.
Genes get shuffled when chromosomes exchange pieces.
Evolution begins with the inheritance of gene variation.
Mendelian laws apply to human beings.
Mendelian genetics cannot fully explain human health and behavior.
DNA and proteins are the molecules of the cell nucleus.
One gene makes one protein.
A gene is made of DNA.
Bacteria and viruses have DNA too.
The DNA molecule is shaped like a twisted ladder.
A half DNA ladder is a template for copying the whole.
RNA is an intermediary between DNA and protein.
DNA words are three letters long.
A gene is a discrete sequence of DNA nucleotides.
The RNA message is sometimes edited.
RNA was the first genetic molecule.
Mutations are changes in genetic information.
Some types of mutations are automatically repaired.
A chromosome is a package for DNA.
Higher cells incorporate an ancient chromosome.
Some DNA does not encode protein.
Some DNA can jump.
Genes can be turned on and off.
Genes can be moved between species.
DNA responds to signals from outside the cell.
Different genes are active in different kinds of cells.
Master genes control basic body plans.
Development balances cell growth and death.
A genome is an entire set of genes.
Living things share common genes.
DNA is only the starting point for understanding human biology.
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