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Does the introduction explain the objective of the research presented in the preprint?

Yes

The preprint gives a brief introduction on the COVID-19 pandemic before diving into a short, but comprehensive characteristic description of the SARS-CoV-2 virus--mainly, its accessory proteins. Then, using prior knowledge of the ORF8's behavior in SARS-CoV-1, the preprint applies its understanding to form hypotheses on SARS-CoV-2's ORF8's function. The preprint states that prior work has shown that an ORF8 deletion virus resulted in increased lung inflammation, but to further characterize the impact of ORF8, another study was conducted where the result ultimately shows that an absence of ORF8 causes increased immune cell infiltration. Therefore, the preprint provides a seamless segue into explaining its objective at the end of the introduction.

Are the methods well-suited for this research?

Highly appropriate

The preprint notes how all virus experiments and recombinant virus creation was approved by the Institutional Biosafety Committee at The University of Maryland, Baltimore. Additionally, each method under the methods section would state where materials were obtained from or from what company lab kits were used from. For processes that required multiple calculation-based steps, the preprint also provided these values, allowing for replication.

Are the conclusions supported by the data?

Highly supported

Are the data presentations, including visualizations, well-suited to represent the data?

Highly appropriate and clear

Each of the provided figures or tables included in the preprint came with their own legend, which were all very descriptive.

How clearly do the authors discuss, explain, and interpret their findings and potential next steps for the research?

Somewhat clearly

The paper's discussion section was highly detailed in terms of explaining and interpreting their findings. However, the preprint only gives a brief nod to potential next steps by explaining how they hope to characterize differences in inflammation in the two different strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus through further studies. No additional depth was provided in what they hope to see/hypothesize/detailed reasons for conducting further analysis.

Is the preprint likely to advance academic knowledge?

Highly likely

Would it benefit from language editing?

No

The preprint did not have grammatical errors or unclear expressions.

Would you recommend this preprint to others?

Yes, it’s of high quality

Is it ready for attention from an editor, publisher or broader audience?

Yes, as it is

ORF8 is not a commonly researched protein based on studies that have conducted research on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The paper seems highly knowledgeable in the information and results it comes to that it would benefit from attention from a broader audience as it offers valuable and unique information.

Competing interests

The author declares that they have no competing interests.