Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is an RNA virus which converts RNA to DNA, which makes it a retrovirus. Retroviruses use single stranded RNA as a template to make double stranded DNA using a viral enzyme. A person who becomes infected with HIV results in a complex clinical disease known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome(AIDS), which may take ten years or more to develop.

HIV contains a protein that is called “reverse transcriptase” which is crucial for viral replication inside of T-cells. This eventually causes the immune system to shut down causing an extremely low tolerance to infectious diseases and eventually death.

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