Copper Tolerance of Trichoderma koningii Tk10

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors The authors identified a fungal strain tolerant to copper. They performed whole genome sequencing, and optimalized the cultivation conditions. Three genes were assessed for gene expression and enzyme activity assasy, supporting their genetic basis for copper tolerance. Generally, this work, though not scientific novel, has merits in screening out useful microbial resource for bioremediation.   Minor revision is needed.   Lines 190-199: How the enzyme activities were measured?  This is lacking in the M&M.   Line 192: "The accumulation of heavy metals can result in the upregulation of numerous proteins, leading to the mitigation of cell toxicity."     This part should put behind the determination of gene expressions.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your professional review of our articles. As you are concerned, there are several problems to be solved. According to your suggestion, we have made corrections to our last draft, Reviewer comments are displayed below in red color font and specific questions are numbered. Our responses are given in regular font, and the detailed corrections are listed below.

Comments 1. Lines 190-199: How the enzyme activities were measured? This is lacking in the M&M.  

Response: Thanks for the valuable comment. The 2.6 Measured enzyme activities section has been added to Lines 114-125, which describes how to measure enzyme activity

Comments 2. Line 192: "The accumulation of heavy metals can result in the upregulation of numerous proteins, leading to the mitigation of cell toxicity." This part should put behind the determination of gene expressions.

Response: Thanks for the positive comments. We agree with the reviewers' suggestions and incorporate the recommended changes into the manuscript. This section was moved to 3.8 Expression profiles of SOD, CAT and POD genes under copper stress in line 248-249.

Thanks to the professional comments again that point out the above problems.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The manuscript is interesting but needs improvement. Below are some important suggestions that they should consider:

1. Please indicate the number of repetitions of the analysed parameters.

2. What statistical methods were used to analyse the data?

3. Please explain the meaning of the letters in Figure 2. Furthermore, Figure 6 is unclear, Figure 7 does not include standard deviations, and Figure 4 does not indicate whether there are significant differences between the values.

 

4. The biggest problem of the article is the discussion because the results are discussed superficially. A more detailed discussion of the results is necessary to improve the scientific reliability of the manuscript. It is worth emphasising in the discussion the similarities and differences between your study and the studies of other authors. It is also necessary to indicate the novelty of the studies that have been conducted.

5. The conclusions are not precise; the authors briefly describe the results in this part, without providing actual findings. The most important goals achieved during the experiment should be emphasised.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your detailed observation. We are very grateful to your comments for the manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Reviewer comments are displayed below in red color font and specific questions are numbered. Our responses are given in regular font, and the detailed corrections are listed below. The main corrections in the manuscript and the responds to the reviewer's comments are answered below.

Comments 1. Please indicate the number of repetitions of the analysed parameters.

Response: Thanks for the valuable comment. The number of repetitions of all analysis parameters has been indicated in the manuscript.

Comments 2. What statistical methods were used to analyse the data?

Response: We appreciate the thoughtful review and constructive feedback provided by you. We have addressed this issue by added 2.10. Statistical analysis was added in lines 151-155, which describes how to perform data analysis.

Comments 3. Please explain the meaning of the letters in Figure 2. Furthermore, Figure 6 is unclear, 

Figure 7 does not include standard deviations, and Figure 4 does not indicate whether there are significant differences between the values.

Response:

Figure2: In the revised manuscript, the corresponding explanation have been added, which can be found in section 2.10. Statistical analysis, which describes how to perform data analysis. The letters in the figure indicate that Statistical differences were established with a p value ≤ 0.05 (Differentiate the varia-tions in the figureusing theletters a, b, c et al.). All data are presented as mean ±standard deviation (mean± S.D.).

Figure4: We appreciate your valuable suggestion. And replace with a comparison diagram to show the difference in enzyme activity.

Figure6: We appreciate your valuable suggestion, and we have changed the resolution of the image to make it clearer.

Figure7: Thanks for the valuable comment. The picture has been modified to increase the standard deviation

Comments 4. The biggest problem of the article is the discussion because the results are discussed superficially. A more detailed discussion of the results is necessary to improve the scientific reliability of the manuscript. It is worth emphasising in the discussion the similarities and differences between your study and the studies of other authors. It is also necessary toindicate the novelty of the studies that have been conducted.

Response: Thank you for your insightful feedback, pointing out that we need a more in - depth discussion of the findings to improve the scientific credibility of the paper. In the revised article, we added research on the results of other researchers and compared it with our own. From the comparison, it can be found that the strain obtained by this screening has a higher copper - ion tolerance range, and we conducted whole - genome sequencing analysis. The successful identification of three potential genes related to copper tolerance provided a solid theoretical basis for the application of heavy - metal bioremediation.

Comments 5. The conclusions are not precise; the authors briefly describe the results in this part, without providing actual findings. The most important goals achieved during the experiment should be emphasised.

Response: Thanks for the valuable comment. We have revised this section to include simplified conclusions and presented the main results of the experiment to clearly highlight our actual findings.

We are grateful for the invaluable feedback, and looking forward to the opportunity to improve our manuscript in response to your guidance.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

accept the revisions made to the article.