Biology: what is a retrovirus?

Tutoring biology, terms come up. The tutor mentions retrovirus.

A retrovirus is a type of virus (for more on viruses, see my post here). What makes one a retrovirus is that, internally, its genetic material (called its genome) is encoded as RNA, rather than DNA.

When a retrovirus attacks a cell, it injects its genome (RNA), along with molecules of reverse transcriptase, therein. The reverse transcriptase causes the viral RNA to be recoded as DNA, which then joins the host’s DNA. The viral DNA has special markers at either end that cause its instructions to be carried out frequently, leading to many copies of the retrovirus being made.

However, HIV is a retrovirus, and can exist in a latent state within the host. It’s not completely understood why this happens.

Source:

bio.libretexts.org

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov