1. HOWARD MARTIN TEMIN Born 10 Dec 1934; died 9 Feb 1994
HOWARD MARTIN TEMIN Born 10 Dec 1934; died 9 Feb American virologist who in 1975 shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with his former professor Renato Dulbecco and another of Dulbecco's students, David Baltimore, for his codiscovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase. In 1961, Temin's formed a provirus hypothesis that cancer cells affect genetic material. The protein coat of certain viruses contains an enzyme that facilitates the copying of viral genes into the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of the host cell. In 1970 he and Baltimore both independently isolated the enzyme, now called reverse transcriptase. The viruses that contain the enzyme are known as retroviruses. Temin also investigated how genetic information in the provirus transforms a normal animal cell into a tumor cell.
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