Kakapo exudative cloacitis infectome

The kakapo is a critically endangered flightless parrot which suffers from exudative cloacitis, a debilitating disease resulting in inflammation of the vent margin or cloaca. We used total RNA sequencing and metatranscriptomic analysis to characterise the infectome of biopsied lesions and cloacal swabs from nine kakapo affected with exudative cloacitis, and compared this to cloacal swabs from 45 non-diseased kakapo.