Reverse transcription is a widely used technique in molecular biology where an RNA strand is reverse transcribed into its DNA complement using the reverse transcriptase.
Reverse transcriptase was also known as RNA-directed DNA polymerase an enzyme encoded from the genetic material of retroviruses that catalyzes the transcription of retrovirus RNA (ribonucleic acid) into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).
It is mostly used in the laboratory to convert RNA to DNA for use in molecular cloning, RNA sequencing, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), or genome analysis.
For example, RT-PCR (Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction) is used to quantify the amount of messenger RNA (mRNA) transcribed from a gene.