How does the role of reverse transcriptase in the replication
cycles of retroviruses and hepadnaviruses differ?
A virus is a group of microorganisms that consist of a submicroscopic infectious particle that unable to survive without a living host. Viruses replicates their genome inside the living host by using host replication machinery. Viruses can have DNA or RNA as a genetic material.
The retroviruses are the group viruses consisting of varied families of enveloped RNA viruses. The positive-sense RNA genome of the retroviruses replicates in the host by using a specialized enzyme reverse transcriptase.
Hepadnaviruses are the small enveloped viruses consisting of single-stranded DNA as genetic material. This virus can infect humans, apes, and birds. The hepadnaviruses contain DNA as genetic material, which is partially double-stranded and partially single-stranded. A genome of the hepadnaviruses consists of two-strand, of which one long strand is minus sense while the other short strand is a positive sense.
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