After completing her PhD in Boston and a postdoc in New York, Oya Cingöz came to the RKI in 2018, where she researches the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other retroviruses. Aided by Christian Drosten, she will now put one of virology’s basic theories to the test as an Einstein Independent Researcher at Charité. Cingöz has discovered that retroviruses do not need DNA from the host’s nucleus for gene expression as previously thought: They appear to also be able to express genes directly from their own RNA genome. This finding could have significant implications, e.g. for the immune responses of people exposed to HIV and the development of retroviral vaccines, which will be further investigated and studied as part of this project.