In 1911 the Rous sarcomavirus (RSV), identified by Peyton Rous as a tumor-causing agent contains an RNA genome which encodes three genes required for replication. These genes, gag, pol and env, are translated to yield three large precursor polyproteins: Gag, Gag-Pol and Env.
Temin proposed in 1964 that the virus somehow translated its RNA into DNA, which then redirected the reproductive activity of the cell, transforming it into a cancer cell. The cell would reproduce this DNA along with its own DNA, producing more cancer cells.
In 1970 Temin and Japanese virologist Satoshi Mizutani, and American virologist David Baltimore, working independently, reported the discovery of an enzyme that could synthesize proviral DNA from the RNA genome of RSV. This enzyme was named RNA-directed DNA polymerase, commonly referred to as reverse transcriptase.
2012 Developing mRNA-vaccine technologies. Because any protein can be expressed from mRNA without the need to adjust the production process, mRNA vaccines also offer maximum flexibility with respect to development. Taken together, mRNA presents a promising vector that may well become the basis of a game-changing vaccine technology platform.
2020 Messenger RNA (abbreviated mRNA) is a type of single-stranded RNA involved in protein synthesis. mRNA is made from a DNA template during the process of transcription. The role of mRNA is to carry protein information from the DNA in a cell’s nucleus to the cell’s cytoplasm (watery interior), where the protein-making machinery reads the mRNA sequence and translates each three-base codon into its corresponding amino acid in a growing protein chain. The main types of genes that play a role in cancer are oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, and DNA repair genes.