Water Extract of Portulaca Oleracea Inhibits PEDV Infection-Induced Pyrolysis by Caspase-1/GSDMD

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled " Water Extract of Portulaca Oleracea Inhibits PEDV Infection-induced Pyrolysis by Caspase-1/GSDMD" Title, abstract and overall rationale of work is written satisfactory.

1) Abstract part is written satisfactory and author much be incorporate complete name before using the abbreviation for example WEPO and GSDMD. Secondly plant species should be written in italic.

2) Some important keywords are missing like In-vitro analysis, PCR and others please add it.

3) In introduction part author need to elaborate more about this medicinal plant and what is the composition of this plant need to be describe. Secondly please write plant species name in italic.

4) Material and methods section: Author should be explained more details for example in this section (Cell lines and virus) author need to write how many Vero cell cultivated and how long?

5) CCK-8 assay also need to elaborate how they perform. For RT-PCR methodology author used delta-delta Ct method and here author need to add the references for clear picture or describe more details see this 10.1016/j.jare.2020.02.016 paper those related to PCR. However, flow cytometry method how they perform need to explain more details or use same reference given above.

6) Results section is written well and describe details however, I have one query about the experiment repetition how many times this experiment is repetition.

7) Discussion section: This section author need to improve because author written the results part but they do not discuss properly and I saw the lack of discussion in this manuscript. I recommend author, they should elaborate the discussion part and author need to revise and compare the study with relevant study.

8) Conclusion: Author need to elaborate conclusion section and author need to write the limitation of study and future prospective.

9) There are some problem in punctuation and typographical errors throughout in the manuscript. kindly correct it.

English is readable and author need to check minor punctuation and typographical errors.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In this manuscript, Lin, Wang and co-workers reported “ Water Extract of Portulaca Oleracea Inhibits PEDV Infection induced Pyrolysis by Caspase -1/GSDMD” as a research article. This manuscript describes porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) infection caused pyroptosis in Vero cells, while Water extract of Portulaca oleracea (WEPO) could inhibit cell drooping caused by PEDV, and showed a dose-dependent effect within a certain range. Furthermore, authors used siRNA to investigate the role of Caspase1/GSDMD in WEPO-mediated inhibition of PEDV. By these investigations, knocking down GSDMD significantly increased the viral load of PEDV and that knocking down Caspase1 affected the inhibitory effect of WEPO on PEDV. The above results further prove that the Caspase-1/GSDMD pathway is vital in WEPO-induced PEDV reduction and pyroptosis.

In summary, I think that this manuscript is appropriate for publication in “Current Issues in Molecular Biology”. 

1.     The characterization of the components in Portulaca Oleracea should be conducted. In this manuscript, the component is unclear and non-scientific results. The authors should provide a characterization by HPLC-analysis or column chromatography of the crude products (Water Extract of Portulaca Oleracea) to ensure the component. If not possible, authors should provide information of the components by investigating the past literatures about the biologically active compounds isolated from Portulaca Oleracea.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed all the concerns raised in the previous version of the manuscript and the quality has much improved after incorporating required modifications. Therefore, the manuscript may be considered for publication in this Journal.

Reviewer 2 Report

This revised manuscript well-written according to the referees’ suggestion and comments carefully. The introduction is easy to understand for the readers. Thus, the quality of manuscript is improved.