Dr. Kristian Andersen and colleagues unearth flaws in study on Ebola virus mutation rate and genotype variation
In a technical comment published in Science, Dr. Kristian Andersen, Director of Infectious Disease Genomics at Scripps Translational Science Institute, together with colleagues from University of Edinburgh, Broad Institute, and University of Sydney, critique conclusions presented in a recent publication – “Mutation rate and genotype variation of Ebola virus from Mali case sequences.”
The authors of the original article and accompanying erratum (Hoenen et al.) asserted that the mutation rate of Ebola virus (EBOV) during the 2013-2016 West African Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemic was lower than initially reported, and that this difference in rate had important implications for the evolution of transmissibility and virulence of EBOV. Dr. Andersen and colleagues argue that the conclusions drawn by Hoenen et al. are erroneous, “based on the corruption of the data [..], and paint a false picture of EBOV evolution”.
Read the technical comment by Dr. Andersen and colleagues in Science, as well as the reply by Hoenen et al.