Table of Contents
For Students
Quizzes
Although viruses play no role in most human cancers, a number of them do stimulate the growth of tumours in animals. Because of that, they have served as important laboratory tools in the elucidation of the genetics of cancer. The viruses that have been most useful to research are the retroviruses. Unlike most organisms, whose genetic information is contained in molecules of DNA, the genes of retroviruses are encoded by molecules of RNA (ribonucleic acid). When retroviruses infect a cell, a viral enzyme called reverse transcriptase copies the RNA into DNA. The DNA molecule then integrates into the genome of ...(100 of 21846 words)