Editing David Baltimore (section)

==== Reverse transcriptase ====
In 1968, he was recruited once more by soon-to-be Nobel laureate [[Salvador Luria]] to the department of biology at MIT as an associate professor of microbiology.<ref name=LuriaS>{{cite book| vauthors = Luria S |date=1984|title=A slot machine, a broken test tube: an autobiography|publisher=Harper & Row}}</ref> [[Alice S. Huang]] also moved to MIT to continue her research on [[vesicular stomatitis virus]] (VSV). They became a couple, and married in October 1968.<ref name="Huang, Caltech"/> At MIT, Huang, Baltimore, and graduate student Martha Stampfer discovered that VSV replication involved an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase within the virus particle, and used a novel strategy to replicate its RNA genome. VSV entered a host cell as a single negative strand of RNA, but brought with it RNA polymerase to stimulate the processes of transcription and replication of more RNA.<ref name=Bhaskaran/><ref name="Huang, Caltech"/><ref name=EB2015>{{cite web|title=David Baltimore|date=2015|website=Encyclopædia Britannica|url=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/51022/David-Baltimore}}</ref>

Baltimore extended this work and examined two RNA tumor viruses, [[Murine leukemia virus|Rauscher murine leukemia virus]] and [[Rous sarcoma virus]].<ref name=Bhaskaran/><ref name="nytimesnobel">{{cite news|title=No Nobel Prize for Whining| vauthors = Judson HF |date=October 20, 2003|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C02E4DE123EF933A15753C1A9659C8B63|newspaper=New York Times}}</ref> He went on to discover [[reverse transcriptase]] (RTase or RT) – the enzyme that polymerizes DNA from an RNA template. In doing so, he discovered a distinct class of viruses, later called [[retrovirus]]es, that use an RNA template to catalyze synthesis of viral DNA.<ref name=Dogma>{{cite web|title=Destroying Dogma: the Discovery of Reverse Transcriptase|url=http://centennial.rucares.org/index.php?page=Destroying_Dogma|website=The Rockefeller University}}</ref> This overturned the simplified version of the central dogma of molecular biology that stated that genetic information flows unidirectionally from DNA to RNA to proteins.<ref name="nytimesnobel"/><ref name=QNA>{{cite journal | vauthors = Baltimore D | title = QnAs with David Baltimore. Interview by Prashant Nair | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 108 | issue = 51 | pages = 20299 | date = December 2011 | pmid = 22187456 | pmc = 3251099 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.1116978108 | bibcode = 2011PNAS..10820299N | doi-access = free }}</ref><ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences}}</ref> Reverse transcriptase is essential for the reproduction of retroviruses, allowing such viruses to turn viral RNA strands into viral DNA strands. The viruses that fall into this category include [[HIV]].<ref name="Huang, Caltech"/><ref name=Dogma/>

The discovery of reverse transcriptase, made contemporaneously with [[Howard Martin Temin|Howard Temin]], who had proposed the provirus hypothesis, showed that genetic information could traffic bidirectionally between DNA and RNA. They published these findings in back-to-back papers in the journal ''Nature''.<ref name=Nature1>{{cite journal | vauthors = Baltimore D | title = RNA-dependent DNA polymerase in virions of RNA tumour viruses | journal = Nature | volume = 226 | issue = 5252 | pages = 1209–11 | date = June 1970 | pmid = 4316300 | doi = 10.1038/2261209a0 | s2cid = 4222378 | bibcode = 1970Natur.226.1209B }}</ref><ref name=Nature2>{{cite journal | vauthors = Temin HM, Mizutani S | title = RNA-dependent DNA polymerase in virions of Rous sarcoma virus | journal = Nature | volume = 226 | issue = 5252 | pages = 1211–3 | date = June 1970 | pmid = 4316301 | doi = 10.1038/2261211a0 | s2cid = 4187764 | bibcode = 1970Natur.226.1211T }}</ref> This discovery made it easier to isolate and reproduce individual genes, and was heralded as evidence that molecular and virological approaches to understanding cancer would yield new cancer treatments.<ref name=":3" /> This may have influenced President Richard Nixon's [[War on Cancer]] which was launched in 1971 and substantially increased research funding for the disease. In 1972, at the age of 34, Baltimore was awarded tenure as a professor of biology at MIT, a post that he held until 1997.