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  • Soo-Jeung Park1,
  • Minhee Lee1 and
  • Yoo-Hyun Lee2,*
  • et al.

Reviewer 1: Anonymous Reviewer 2: Anonymous Reviewer 3: Anonymous

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript analyses the effects of Zingiber mioga extracts in expression of mRNA and proteins of different molecules related to moisturization and depigmentation of skin. The paper is well written and structured, experimental design is correct, and results are well analyzed and discussed. However, some major revisions are required:

 

  • Lines 47-50: the authors must add a reference to support this sentence.
  • Lines 104-106: the authors should indicate whether the primers used have been obtained from previous work, or were designed for this work and how they have been designed. In addition, they must indicate that the GADPH is the housekeeping used, and explain why it has been used and not another.
  • Line 115: wrongly indicated reference.
  • Line 116: the authors should indicate that beta-actin has been used as a control.
  • Line 122: the authors should explain this measurement method (what it consists of, for example).
  • Line 136: how has it been analyzed?
  • Line 154: If an anova test, which is a parametric test, has been used, the authors should previously analyze both the normality and the homoscedasticity of the data. From my experience, gene expression data are not usually distributed in a normal way, and it is necessary to use either a non-parametric test, or to perform a mathematical transformation (usually logarithmic).
  • Lines 297-321: this information would be more relevant in the Introduction section.
  • Lines 342-344: unify the font and line spacing used in this paragraph.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. We agreed to your comments and changed the manuscript as the followings.

 

Major

  1. As you requested, we added a reference (line 48-50).
  2. As you requested, we added a description of how the primer was designed and the housekeeping gene (line 107-111).
  3. As you suggested, we indicated that beta-actin was used as a control (line 123-124).
  4. In this experiment, a specific moisture measuring device is used, so when we press the measurement button, the value is measured and sent directly to the mobile phone. This is a state-of-the-art method, not a manual method. So we added an additional phrase (line 129-130)
  5. Since it is a morphological observation of the back skin wrinkles with a digital microscope, it is difficult to analyze the depth of the wrinkles, and the word analysis has been deleted (line 141-142).
  6. Thanks for the valuable advice. However, the purpose of this experiment is to compare the genetic variation and difference of each group, and since the RT-PCR data is analyzed as delta delta CT value, ANOVA was used, and the post-analysis was set to Duncan, and descriptive statistics and variance homogeneity test Was selected as an option (line 162).
  7. In this study, we added active substance data, deleted phrases more suitable for Introduction as you suggested, and added information about active substances (line 59-65, 76-84, 164-170).
  8. As you requested, we modified the font and line spacing (line 358-363).

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely yours,

Jeongmin Lee, Ph.D.

 

Department of Medical Nutrition, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea.

Phone: 82-31-201-3838

Fax: 82-31-204-8119

E.mail: jlee2007@khu.ac.kr

Reviewer 2 Report

Experimentally well organised. Interesting. Publishable as it is.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable review of our paper.

Thank you.

 

Sincerely yours,

Jeongmin Lee, Ph.D.

 

Department of Medical Nutrition, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea.

Phone: 82-31-201-3838

Fax: 82-31-204-8119

E.mail: jlee2007@khu.ac.kr

Reviewer 3 Report

The work of Park et al is interesting and worth to publish in Applied Sciences. The manuscript is suitable to be published in this journal, but I recommend major revisions before its consideration.

  • Previous reported data on extracts of ZM and correspondence to bioactive compounds should be more detailed. Based on that, the novelty of this work should be highlighted in the aim and conclusions.
  • What is the reason for selecting arbutin and L-ascorbic acid as positive controls?
  • In my opinion, the main weakness of the work is the complete absence of the chemical composition of the ZM hot water extract. Is this a standardized extract? Which are its main bioactive components?
  • Lines 97- 102. Text repetition (lines 90-95).
  • In general, the results in subsections are described in a monotonous/repetitive way by “…was significantly increased/decreased in the C group compared to the NC group. Compared with the C group …. Please revise this point is all section 3.
  • No are no results in conclusions. Please improve.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. We agreed to your comments and changed the manuscript as the followings.

 

Major

  1. As you suggested, we have added data and related information on bioactive substances, and based on this, we linked it to the purpose and conclusion of the study (line 59-65, 76-84, 164-170, 328-332).
  2. In previous papers, L-ascorbic acid has been widely used as a positive control in skin moisturizing and wrinkle studies, and arbutin has been used in whitening studies. Since this study deals with both skin moisturizing, wrinkles, and whitening, these two substances were set as positive controls (line 332-337).
  3. As mentioned above, we added HPLC data by quantifying the bioactive substances in ZM. Thanks for the advice (line 164-170).
  4. Thank you very much for your review. We have deleted the redundant paragraph (line 90-95).
  5. As you suggested, we have modified all the simple phrases in the all results section.
  6. As you requested, we have added more results to the conclusion (line 395-399, 401-404).

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely yours,

Jeongmin Lee, Ph.D.

 

Department of Medical Nutrition, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea.

Phone: 82-31-201-3838

Fax: 82-31-204-8119

E.mail: jlee2007@khu.ac.kr

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Material and methods section should indicate that delta delta CT method has been used. Furthermore, before applying a parametric test such as ANOVA, the authors must confirm the normality and homoscedasticity of the data, also indicating it in the material and methods.

Author Response

Thanks for your suggestions. We agreed to your comments and changed the manuscript as the followings.

 

Minor

  1. As you requested, we have added a description of the delta delta CT method in the materials and methods section (line 110-111). Not only that, we also added a statement that we checked normality and homoscedasticity in the statistics section (line 158-160).

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Jeongmin Lee, Ph.D.

Department of Medical Nutrition, Kyung Hee University, Republic of Korea.

Phone: 82-31-201-3838

Fax: 82-31-204-8119

E.mail: jlee2007@khu.ac.kr