Challenge the biology textbook!

I believe that if you have studied high school biology, you must have heard of the "Central Law".

In traditional cognition, the genetic information of cell-structured organisms is mainly transmitted to RNA through DNA, and then from RNA to protein, so as to complete the process of transcription and translation of genetic information

However, a new study published in the journal Science Advances by researchers from Thomas Jefferson University found that there is a retrograde "polymerase θ (Pol θ)" hidden in the human body, which can mediate the writing of RNA sequences into DNA.

DOI: 10.

So what is so unusual about "Polymerase Theta"?

Polymerase θ (Pol θ) belongs to the DNA polymerase A family.

However, although Polθ has "carelessness" problems, these "bad properties" of Polθ have attracted the attention of researchers, and people have found that it seems to be "character" similar to the reverse transcriptase of the retrovirus HIV

Polθ exhibits reverse transcriptase activity

In order to further verify the researchers' conjecture, the researchers developed a cellular green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter gene detection method to compare the functions of Polθ and HIV reverse transcriptase

Studies have found that Polθ is not inferior to HIV reverse transcriptase.

Polθ promotes DNA repair using RNA as a template

Not only that, the research team also collaborated with Dr.

The ternary structure of Polθ on DNA/RNA primer template

It is worth mentioning that Polθ is a unique multifunctional DNA polymerase.

All in all, this research challenges the "central law", the basic law of life sciences, and may provide new ideas for the future development of genetic engineering and protein engineering, or become a new star in the field of tumor precision medicine!