David Baltimore's Nobel Prize for the Discovery of Reverse Transcriptase

New York is one of the few cities that can claim it is the birthplace of a Nobel prize winner in every category. While some Nobel categories only boast one native New Yorker as a winner, others, such as chemistry, physics, economics and medicine, have had several New Yorkers as winners over the years.

David Baltimore, who was born in New York in 1938, was awarded a Nobel Prize in the physiology or medicine category in 1975. He shared the award with Howard Temin and Renato Dulbecco for their discovery of how tumor viruses interact with cells in the human body. Baltimore discovered an enzyme called reverse transcriptase (RTase), which is required for a certain class of viruses, called retroviruses, to reproduce. His research was crucial to learning how retroviruses, such as the HIV virus, infect cells and reproduce within the human body. Baltimore also discovered the NF-kB protein complex, which controls transcription, as well as the recombination activating genes RAG-1 and RAG-2, which help with the rearrangement and recombination of genes.