Definition of "lentivirus" [lentivirus]

• See slow virus. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "By 1984, Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier had obtained several isolates of the novel human retrovirus, which they identified as a lentivirus, from sexually infected individuals, haemophiliacs, mother to infant transmissions and transfused patients."
• "As if a lentivirus from a genetically modified cocoa plant is going to implant a promoter in out cells that will lead to cancer."
• "By discovering its shape, and how it behaved biochemically in the human immune system, they showed that this retrovirus (a retrovirus invades and fuses with DNA of host cells and replicates as part of that cell) was the first known human lentivirus, that is a virus with a long incubation period."