I congratulate the authors on their contribution to our understanding of the HTLV-1/host microRNA interplay and how this may affect viral latency. Addressing the following two points would be tremendously helpful:
1. The authors provided the GEO accession number for the transcription factor arrays (GSE33628), but I was unable to find reference to the corresponding dataset for the miRNA microarrays. I encourage the authors to provide the accession number for these data if they have been submitted, or, if not, to upload their raw and processed array data as per journal policy (see http://www.plosone.org/st... ).
2. It is not clear how many biological replicates were tested by microarray. The heatmap shows only two samples; of course, p values for biological significance could not be calculated without biological replicates. Answers to the following questions would clear up any possible confusion:
How many biological replicates were tested by miRNA microarray?
Were any technical replicates performed (i.e. multiple microarrays, not triplicate spots on the same array, for the same sample)?
How were the p-values calculated, and were multiple comparison corrections performed?
I thank the authors in advance for their clarification of these points.