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Referee comments: Referee 1 (Patrick CY Woo)

Posted by PLOS_ONE_Group on 03 Apr 2008 at 19:13 GMT

Referee 1's review (Patrick CY Woo):

This is the first paper that uses the current ICTV criteria for classification of this novel group of rhinovirus. The methodology is sound and the conclusion that the virus named as human rhinovirus C valid. Some minor comments below:

1. Introduction, line 116, 75 serotypes belong to HRV A. However, according to other analysis, HRV87 is an exception, which was found to belong to the humna enterovirus D.

2. Results, lines 194-7, and throughout the manuscript, I found it a bit confusing because the authors mentioned that all HRV A2 ... (n=6)... However, as the authors stated in the introduction, not all 6 strains were named as such. Two were named as HRV-Xs and three as HRV-Cs. I think it would be more clear if it can be replaced with something like "all 6 strains of the novel rhinovirus species cluster" throughout the paper. Furthermore, in the first part in the results, it would be clearer if the authors stated how many of the 6 strains of the novel rhinovirus species cluster used for the analysis were HRV A2, HRV-Xs and HRV-Cs respectively, and give the names of the strains (HRV-QPM, HRV-X1, HRV-X2, HRV-C024, HRV-C025 and HRV-C026, references and GenBank accession no., so that the readers can keep track on the analysis more easily. In fact, it would make the paper more convincing because the readers can appreciate better that the 6 genomes are from a global collection of strains, rather than from a restricted source.

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N.B. These are the comments made by the referee when reviewing an earlier version of this paper. Prior to publication the manuscript has been revised in light of these comments and to address other editorial requirements.

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