On 2014 Nov 17, Mick Watson commented:

Hi Robert, and thanks for the response. The results from your qPCR are inconclusive, really the only way to rule out contamination is to sequence the negative control, which has ideally been prepared using the same batch of kits and reagents. Also, the fact that the virus has an effect in mice is negated if the virus is a contaminant, as it may never get into mice in a natural environment.

May I ask why you didn't sequence the negative controls?

On 2014 Nov 06, Robert H Yolken commented:

We actively considered contamination as the source of the sequences we obtained since these viruses may be common in the environment. However, we believe that contamination is rendered unlikely by the fact that, in many cases, we were able to document the presence of DNA homologous to ATCV-1 by 2 independent methods, library generation and quantitative PCR. In the quantitative PCR the reagent controls gave consistently negative results. We also believe that the plausibility of our findings in humans is supported by the mouse experiments presented in the publication.

On 2014 Nov 04, Mick Watson commented:

I'd like to politely suggest that the authors need to rule out contamination from reagents and kits used in the experiments (e.g. see http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/07/16/007187)

On 2014 Nov 04, Mick Watson commented:

I'd like to politely suggest that the authors need to rule out contamination from reagents and kits used in the experiments (e.g. see http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/07/16/007187)

On 2014 Nov 06, Robert H Yolken commented:

We actively considered contamination as the source of the sequences we obtained since these viruses may be common in the environment. However, we believe that contamination is rendered unlikely by the fact that, in many cases, we were able to document the presence of DNA homologous to ATCV-1 by 2 independent methods, library generation and quantitative PCR. In the quantitative PCR the reagent controls gave consistently negative results. We also believe that the plausibility of our findings in humans is supported by the mouse experiments presented in the publication.

On 2014 Nov 17, Mick Watson commented:

Hi Robert, and thanks for the response. The results from your qPCR are inconclusive, really the only way to rule out contamination is to sequence the negative control, which has ideally been prepared using the same batch of kits and reagents. Also, the fact that the virus has an effect in mice is negated if the virus is a contaminant, as it may never get into mice in a natural environment.

May I ask why you didn't sequence the negative controls?