LINE-1 ORF2p functions as a reverse transcriptase. Professor Eddy Arnold, one of eight co-corresponding authors on the paper, and co-author Associate Research Professor Francesc Xavier Ruiz, both at Rutgers’ Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine (CABM), are experts on the structure of reverse transcriptase enzymes. “A central dogma of molecular biology held that genetic information always flowed from DNA to RNA to protein,” said Ruiz. “It wasn’t until the 1970s that reverse transcriptases were discovered — proteins like L1 ORF2p that make RNA into extra DNA, which is inserted into the genome — and that they were central to retroviruses such as HIV.”
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