What are the applications for reverse transcriptase?

In molecular biology, reverse transcriptase is used in the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique to transcribe RNA into DNA, thereby facilitating the PCR analysis of RNA molecules. Reverse transcriptase is key to obtaining the initial complementary DNA (cDNA) from RNA, which can then be used to create cDNA libraries for use in several applications to further study a specific gene. In the pharmaceutical industry, reverse transcriptase is used to design specific drugs to disrupt the proliferation of retroviruses such as HIV, thereby suppressing their growth.