Vincent travels to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to speak with David Baltimore, John Coffin, and Harold Varmus about the discovery in 1970 of retroviral reverse transcriptase and its impact on life sciences research.

Vincent and Dickson continue virology 101 with a discussion of information flow from RNA to DNA, a process known as reverse transcription, which occurs in cells infected with retroviruses, hepatitis B virus, cauliflower mosaic virus, foamy viruses, and even in uninfected cells.