HIV virus has :

Classification of HIV ( = HTLV III) Family – Retroviridae Subfamily – Lentivirus Genome – SS RNA positive sense. • Virion contain lipoprotein envelope and nucleocapsid is icosahedral in shape. • Characteristic feature of retrovirus is presence of reverse transcriptase enzyme. – Viral RNA is transcribed by this enzyme first into SS DNA then to ds DNA which gets integrated with host cell. – Thus in contrast to central dogma flow of information is RNA  →  DNA  →  RNA