Angela Kennedy
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Yes, mouse DNA is not the same as XMRV. But... Many mice have XMRV integrated into their DNA; XMRV started off life as a mouse retrovirus that lost the ability to reinfect mice cells but is still carried in the DNA of many mice. So if you have mouse DNA there's a decent chance it contains XMRV. Put another way, finding contaminating mouse DNA means that any XMRV detected may have come from mouse contamination, not the human patient. Still, not all mice carry XMRV so mouse dna contamination could in theory occur but not be responsible for postive XMRV findings.
Correct, XMRV itself does not carry mouse DNA (well, it might just pick up tiny bits of it, but not enough to be detected by any of the mouse DNA tests discussed in the Retrovirology papers).
However, my point was that the Hue paper suggested the WPI XMRV findings were contaminants from human cell lines, NOT mice.
Other questions then arise: how many mice are believed to carry XMRV (what proportion?) What else do mice carry that might 'contaminate' labs? Lab mice or wild 'house' mice?
People may not have the answers here, I understand. I'm saying there are so many possible confounding issues going on here, for example other infections that might be just 'mice' contaminations (by their logic)? It's a can o' worms.