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Science & Medicine

Howard Temin

Who

Howard Temin · Science & Medicine

What

Reverse Transcriptase

When

1934, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA — 1994, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

Where

United States

Biography

Howard Temin is recognized among Jewish contributors to Science & Medicine — Reverse Transcriptase

How & why

Howard Temin, raised in a Jewish family in Philadelphia, worked at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Against the prevailing belief that genetic information flows only from DNA to RNA, he proposed and then proved that some viruses copy their RNA back into DNA using an enzyme, reverse transcriptase. This overturned a central dogma of biology and later became essential to understanding retroviruses such as HIV; he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Sources & external links

Verify and go deeper with these external references.

Source: Nobel Prize Medicine 1975

Contributions & Sources

Reverse Transcriptase

1975

Source: Nobel Prize Medicine 1975