The History of Viruses

In 1975, David Baltimore and Renato D'Albecco won a Nobel Prize for discovering that RSV could turn their RNA-based genome back into DNA. In 1989, Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus discovered oncogenes in healthy chicken cells without being infected by the virus. These are normal genes inside cells responsible for controlling cell growth and proliferation. If these genes become mutated and overactive, then a cell will grow out of control into a cancer. This is the fundamental genetic basis for tumor formation - it utterly transformed our understanding of how cancers grow. And Peyton Rouse himself got a Nobel after publishing his initial findings more than five decades after they were first published.