The koala retrovirus (KoRV) is a gammaretrovirus closely related to the gibbon ape leukemia virus and induces leukemias and immune deficiencies associated with opportunistic infections, such as chlamydiosis. Here we characterize a KoRV newly isolated from an animal in a German zoo and show infection of human and rat cell lines in vitro and of rats in vivo, using immunological and PCR methods fo...

Australidelphia is the cohort, originally named by Szalay, of all Australian marsupials and the South American Dromiciops. A lot of mitochondria and nuclear genome studies support the hypothesis of a monophyly of Australidelphia, but some familial relationships in Australidelphia are still unclear. In particular, the familial relationships among the order Diprotodontia (koala, wombat, kangaroos...

Models of species' distributions are commonly used to inform landscape and conservation planning. In urban and semiurban landscapes, the distributions of species are determined by a combination of natural habitat and anthropogenic impacts. Understanding the spatial influence of these two processes is crucial for making spatially explicit decisions about conservation actions. We present a logist...

Chlamydiosis, the most common infectious disease in koalas, can cause chronic urogenital tract fibrosis and infertility. High titres of serum immunoglobulin G against 10 kDa and 60 kDa chlamydial heat-shock proteins (c-hsp10 and c-hsp60) are associated with fibrous occlusion of the koala uterus and uterine tube. Murine and human studies have identified associations between specific major histoc...

Koala retrovirus (KoRV) is a gammaretrovirus that is currently endogenizing into koalas. Studies on KoRV infection have been hampered by the lack of a replication-competent molecular clone. In this study, we constructed an infectious molecular clone, termed plasmid pKoRV522, of a KoRV isolate (strain Aki) from a koala reared in a Japanese zoo. The virus KoRV522, derived from pKoRV522, grew effi...