Genome-Wide Identification and Expression Analysis of RCC1 Gene Family under Abiotic Stresses in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editors staff,

The authors evaluated the seeds of Oryza sativa L. japonica cv. Nipponbare in the greenhouse under stress treatments, i., e. salt (150 mM NaCl), drought (20% (m/V) PEG-6000), low temperature (4°C), high temperature (40°C), and exogenous hormone ABA (50 μM), respectively. Then, seedling leaves were sampled after treatment for 0, 2, 4, 8 and 12 h. Their objective was to provide a theoretical basis and understanding the function of RCC1s in rice evolution, growth, development and survival, as well as a reference for the subsequent functional validation.  

 

The topic is very interesting and the manuscript is very well written. All parts of the research are well written and the introduction, results and discussion are at a high level except for the part related to materials and methods, especially experimental design.

 

Despite the importance of the topic at the present time and the work and efforts done by researchers in labs, I have some comments:

·         The authors did not mention the type of the experimental design they used.

·         How many replications in each experiment?

·         How many seeds or plant of rice in each experiment?

·         Are there variations among treatments?

 

Best wishes

 

Generally, the manuscript can be accepted after answering the questions

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1.      You have clearly defined the tandem duplicates, and however, it is still not clear how segmental duplications are defined. Please make clear definition on it and discuss it the distance between genes on the same chromosome is the main parameter to define these duplication events or not. Does this account for inter-chromosomal events?

 

2.      How can you avoid the non-specific amplification while you have designed the qRT-PCR primers?

 

3.      Are all full-length of RCC1 genes sequences used to conduct the analysis? You have to consider that the partial sequences cannot have all exons and introns.

 

4.      In discussion, please provide the mechanism that supports the loss of intron in the gene duplication event.

 

5.      Redraw the figure 4 because it provides nothing important, and it may make it much informative if you can add the SNP markers nearby.

Author Response

Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well prepared, following a standard style of presentation. The authors need to check the language as I noticed many grammatical/expression errors.  

In the M&M, "The expression data of OsRCC1s in 15 various organs/tissues of rice, including seedling roots, mature leaves, young leaves, stem apical meristems (SAM), panicles and seeds, as well as under three different abiotic stresses (salt, drought and low temperature), were obtained from Rice eFP Browser (http://bar.utoronto.ca/efprice/cgi-bin/efpWeb.cgi)." and Results "To investigate the potential role of OsRCC1s in response to abiotic stresses, microarray data of 7-day-old rice seedlings (indica variety IR64) under three abiotic stresses (salt, drought and cold) and control conditions for 3h were obtained from the public database Rice eFP Browser and analyzed". Do they obtain the data from the existing database or their own experiments (2.9. Plant Material, Stress Treatment, RNA Extraction and Quantitative RT-PCR Analysis)? 

Author Response

Thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx