It seems that Coffin et al. have not established that the ERVs putatively proposed to be the source of the proviral sequence branded as XMRV actually express RNA or that either can form a virion with sufficient integrity to enable recombination of heterogeneous strands of genomic RNA.
While I do not agree with the conclusions of Stoye et al. on this occasion, their comments are helpful in drawing attention to a lack of due diligence, which appears to be becoming a problem generally within the field.
Ever growing issue of due diligence
1 June 2012
It seems that Coffin et al. have not established that the ERVs putatively proposed to be the source of the proviral sequence branded as XMRV actually express RNA or that either can form a virion with sufficient integrity to enable recombination of heterogeneous strands of genomic RNA.
While I do not agree with the conclusions of Stoye et al. on this occasion, their comments are helpful in drawing attention to a lack of due diligence, which appears to be becoming a problem generally within the field.
Competing interests
None.