Talk:Reverse transcriptase

Rewrite tag
I am not entirely sure, but as far as I remember RTase added dTs opposite As in the RNA. I am not sure dUs even exist in cells. The ASCII diagram urgently needs to be replaced, IMO. The sectioning makes the article difficult to read. Most sections should either be significant expanded or merged into other sections or introduction. There are several factual errors as well. For example, RNA viruses are definitely not synonymous with retroviruses. True RNA viruses, such as picornaviruses (eg. Polio)), unlike retroviruses never go through a DNA stage and use an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase rather than a reverse transcriptase. In light of all this I am replacing the cleanup tag with a rewrite tag. Peter Znamenskiy 20:36, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this article is woefully organised and badly in need of some error fixing. Two subheadings called examples! Crikey. It's going on my to-do list --  Serephine   ♠   talk   - 05:51, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup
Cleanup done, citations replaced. Things still need to be done include: --  Serephine   ♠   talk   - 09:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * a diagram for the process of reverse transcription
 * a diagram of the structure of a RT
 * More information on the structure of RT


 * Brilliant work! I will try to expand the stucture section when I get fulltext access to e-journals. Peter Z.Talk 16:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Avogadro23 (talk) 19:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

I see that the diagram has been added for the process, but it shows 8 steps. The text description under section "Retroviral Reverse Transcription" gives 8. There seems to be a discrepancy here. Also: I have only used RT in vitro, so perhaps I'm not understanding the viral process, but I think there are some issues with the description. How can the primer jump to the first strand (step 7) if it has already been degraded (Step 5)?

double stranded DNA?
I'm not sure that the "double stranded DNA" part should be included in the RT definition. After all some RTs synthesise only one strand of DNA - cDNA. But maybe I'm biased as a person who uses it only for reverse transcription in vitro. Independovirus (talk) 11:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge
I think Reverse transcriptase and Reverse transcription may be merged, because they basically tell the same thing, the same phenomenon. Better have them together to get the whole thing. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:59, 17 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Anyhow, it's done now. Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Reverse Transcriptases will synthesize both strands, they are true DNA polymerases (in addition to being RNA Dependent DNA polymerases, they are indeed DNA dependent DNA polymerases similar to the ones replicating cellular genomes while you wrote your comments), assuming they have an available annealed oligonucleotide primer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ekennedt (talk • contribs) 23:25, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

RT is not specific to retroviruses or other "viruses"
RT is present in all cells, healthy and unhealthy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:540:C400:8C80:A8B2:DA0B:FF02:7105 (talk) 01:34, 10 May 2018 (UTC)