Chromatin Accessibility Is Associated with Artemisinin Biosynthesis Regulation in Artemisia annua

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Zhou et al. presented and interesting report on the regulation of artemisinin biosynthetic and precursor supply genes via chromatin accessibility in Glandular Trichomes of A. annua. This is, up to my knowledge, the first study of that kind performed on A. annua.  However, chromatin accessibility is a very common mechanism for regulation of gene expression within all living organisms, hence my lower notes for "Significance of Content" and "Interest to the readers". 

Paper also requires minor modifications, including clarifications to the results and material and methods section as highlighted in the attached draft. Some citations missing as well. Conclusions are justified but better quality reference genome assembly would definitely improve analysis done by the authors. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors presented on artemisinin, a type of sesquiterpene lactone, biosynthetic regulation. The content of this manuscript is well organized. This manuscript contains content that is of interest to experts in this field as well as non-experts. In particular, elucidation of the mechanism of biosynthetic regulation of artemisinin may help the development of therapeutic agents for infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

To make this manuscript ever better, please consider the following comments.

Add the structural formula of artemisinin to the text.

Add the biosynthetic pathway of artemisinin to the text.

In relation to the results obtained this time, the authors should mention whether the biosynthetic regulation of artemisinin analogs contained in Artemisia annua can be also considered in the same manner as artemisinin.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf