Pol (HIV)

Products of pol include: Common to all retroviruses, this enzyme transcribes the viral RNA into double-stranded DNA.

This enzyme integrates the DNA produced by reverse transcriptase into the host's genome.

A protease is any enzyme that cuts proteins into segments.

HIV's gag and pol genes do not produce their proteins in their final form, but as larger combination proteins; the specific protease used by HIV cleaves these into separate functional units.

Protease inhibitor drugs block this step.

The Gag-Pol region containing the protease gene flanked by p6 pol at the N-terminus and reverse transcriptase at the C-terminus.