Male-Biased gga-miR-2954 Regulates Myoblast Proliferation and Differentiation of Chicken Embryos by Targeting YY1

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors show, through in vitro over-expression and loss-of-function experiments that ga-miR-2954 targets YY1 to affect chicken myoblast proliferation/differentiation. There are only a few minor should be addressed. English grammar needs to be corrected throughout. Please see the attached file for suggested changes/comments in tracked changes (apologies for any formatting issues with the attached word file). My other main comment would be that higher resolution images must be provided.

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. There is no indication of sample sizes; in some of the figure legends, the authors state that values are the means from the three independent experiments. Does this mean that the cells from multiple embryos were pooled and these pools were used in the experiments, if so, how many embryos were pooled? Why were individual embryos not used? The materials and methods section needs to be revised to provide this information.

2. The immunofluorescence images are all blurry/pixilated and it is difficult to discern what the authors are trying to convey, better quality images are needed.

3. Overall, the language of the manuscript needs to be improved, currently it is not written in a professional scientific manner, but is written in a more conversational style, which is not appropriate for a scientific article.