Interclass transmission and phyletic host tracking in murine leukemia virus-related retroviruses.

ABSTRACT: Retroviruses are capable of infectious horizontal transmission between hosts, usually between individuals within a single species, although a number of probable zoonotic infections resulting from transmission between different species of placental mammals have also been reported. Despite these data, it remains unclear how often interspecies transmission events occur or whether their frequency is influenced by the evolutionary distance between host taxa. To address this problem we used PCR to amplify and characterize endogenous retroviruses related to the murine leukemia viruses. We show that members of this retroviral genus are harbored by considerably more organisms than previously thought and that phylogenetic analysis demonstrates that viruses isolated from a particular host class gener

SUBMITTER: Martin J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC104491 | biostudies-literature | 1999 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature