An Antimicrobial Marine Cage Surface Modified with Antibacterial Peptides
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
more details of materials must be reported.
some more information need
Author Response
Reviewer 1：(Marked them in green)
- More details of materials must be reported.
Response: Thank you for the good suggestion. We have added more material information and in the “Section 2.1” of revised version.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript concerns the use of antimicrobial coationgs.
The manuscript raises a very interesting topic with great application potential
The planned research and their discussion are appropriate.
The only thing missing is testing the stability/durability of the protective coating in seawater. If coatings will be used in the marine aquaculture industry, they must be resistant to seawater.
Some text may be missing from the manuscript, please check it. Point 4 is missing; line 262 paragraph indent missing.
Other minor comments are listed below:
- Lines 70, 87; the first use of abbreviations requires explanation
- Line 125; “Tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane” needs to be corrected, please remove spaces
- Lines 135, 138; no subscripts
- 2.5 Antymicrobial tests; temperature should be written with a space between the value and the degree sign, different way of writing, different degree symbols used; please correct.
Author Response
Reviewer 2: (Marked them in blue)
- The only thing missing is testing the stability/durability of the protective coating in seawater. If coatings will be used in the marine aquaculture industry, they must be resistant to seawater.
Response: Thank you for your constructive suggestion. We conducted the stability test in artificial seawater, and added the relevant content and results to the revised manuscript and the supplementary file (Figure S1).
- Some text may be missing from the manuscript, please check it. Point 4 is missing; line 262 paragraph indent missing.
Response: Sorry for the mistake. We have already revised it in the revised version.
- Other minor comments are listed below:
- Lines 70, 87; the first use of abbreviations requires explanation
- Line 125; “Tris (hydroxymethyl) aminomethane” needs to be corrected, please remove spaces
- Lines 135, 138; no subscripts
- 2.5 Antymicrobial tests; temperature should be written with a space between the value and the degree sign, different way of writing, different degree symbols used; please correct.
Response: Thank you for your good suggestion. We have already revised them in the revised version.
Reviewer 3 Report
In this article, the authors investigated the effect of surface modification of stainless steel (SS) and nylon (PA) substrate with antimicrobial peptide derived from Viola philippica coupled with dopamine treatment. While the scientific soundness and quality of the presentation of most of the results shown in this manuscript seem to be fine, there are several major and minor issues and the novelty of this work that require further clarification from the authors. Therefore, I could not recommend publishing the current version of this article in Coatings before the following issues are properly addressed.
Line 10:
Antibacterial peptides (AMPs)
- The underline should be ‘Antimicrobial’ to be consistent with the abbreviation.
Line 18:
nylon surface modified by…
- The authors should add (PA) after nylon.
Line 20:
…and exhibiting significant robustness.
- This should be ‘robustness of antimicrobial efficiency' to avoid misunderstanding.
Line 30 and 38:
…Other Prokaryote… and …Fluid mechanics…
- These words do not need to be capitalized.
Line 75:
…, and it has been widely…
- The underline should be ‘they have’.
Line 81:
…bio organic metal materials.
- This word should be ‘biological metal-organic materials’.
Line 114-120:
- In the last paragraph of the introduction, the author should emphasize more on what are the key findings and novelty of this article. Otherwise, the content presented in this article might not significantly differ from that of the author's previous works such ref.# 28.
Line 123:
304 annealed stainless steel disks and nylon were purchased from Alibaba.
- It is not clear whether these materials purchased from Alibaba are suitable for academic research due to the lack of their specifications presented in this section.
Figure 2:
- Letters A and B should be added to each image.
Line 226-233:
- The discussion of FTIR results of Fig.3 shown in the second half of the paragraph should point out which results belong to PA-DP or SS-DP samples. In addition, the author should also discuss how the spectra are different regarding the difference in substrate materials (nylon VS SS).
Line 238-246:
- Surface roughness also plays an important role in wetting property of the surfaces. The author should also measure the surface roughness of the samples after treatment with dopamine and peptide to support the contact angle discussion. In fact, the surface roughness of the original substrates may be different, and there is no polishing step in the surface preparation section to minimize the variation of surface roughness of both nylon and SS substrates.
Line 254-255:
‘After dopamine and peptide treatment, the OD values decreased sharply, and it caused by the mild antibacterial ability of dopamine and the antibacterial/bactericidal ability of the extracted peptide.’
- According to this statement, what could be the reasons that the absorbance of PA-DA decreased sharply while SS-DA just slightly decreased compared to PA and SS, respectively?
Figure 5:
- For better comparison, the plots in Figure 5 could be combined into one plot similar to Figure 4. Alternatively, if the authors intend to separate the plots, the scale of Fig. 5A and 5B should be the same, for example, the maximum absorbance should be 1.6 for both plots.
Line 290-303:
The conclusion section should not only mention the purposes of each characterization method but also summarize the key findings of the current work.
Author Response
Reviewer 3: (Marked them in red)
- Line 10:
Antibacterial peptides (AMPs)
- The underline should be ‘Antimicrobial’ to be consistent with the abbreviation.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already changed “Antibacterial peptides” into “Antimicrobial peptides” in the revised manuscript.
- Line 18:
nylon surface modified by…
- The authors should add (PA) after nylon.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already added (PA) after nylon in the revised manuscript.
- Line 20:
…and exhibiting significant robustness.
- This should be ‘robustness of antimicrobial efficiency' to avoid misunderstanding.
Response: Thank you for your good suggestion. We have already replaced “robustness of antimicrobial efficiency” with “significant robustness” in the revised manuscript.
- Line 30 and 38:
…Other Prokaryote… and …Fluid mechanics…
- These words do not need to be capitalized.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already changed them in the revised manuscript.
- Line 75:
…, and it has been widely…
- The underline should be ‘they have’.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already changed “it has” into “they have” in the revised manuscript.
- Line 81:
…bio organic metal materials.
- This word should be ‘biological metal-organic materials’.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already changed “bio organic metal materials” into “biological metal-organic materials” in the revised manuscript.
- Line 114-120:
- In the last paragraph of the introduction, the author should emphasize more on what are the key findings and novelty of this article. Otherwise, the content presented in this article might not significantly differ from that of the author's previous works such ref.# 28.
Response: Thank you for your good suggestion. The key findings of the manuscript were added in the last paragraph of the introduction.
- Line 123:
304 annealed stainless steel discs and nylon were purchased from Alibaba.
- It is not clear whether these materials purchased from Alibaba are suitable for academic research due to the lack of their specifications presented in this section.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We just wrote about the material purchase platform previously, which is an unprofessional way of writing. We have already clearly written the purchasing manufacturer and conducted surface composition analysis of stainless steel and nylon. The surface composition has been added to the supplementary files (Table S1).
- Figure 2:
- Letters A and B should be added to each image.
Response: Sorry for the mistake. Letters A and B have already been added to each Figure 2.
- Line 226-233:
- The discussion of FTIR results of Fig.3 shown in the second half of the paragraph should point out which results belong to PA-DP or SS-DP samples. In addition, the author should also discuss how the spectra are different regarding the difference in substrate materials (nylon VS SS).
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already pointed out which results belong to PA-DP or SS-DP samples, and discussed the spectra differences in the revised manuscript.
- Line 238-246:
- Surface roughness also plays an important role in wetting property of the surfaces. The author should also measure the surface roughness of the samples after treatment with dopamine and peptide to support the contact angle discussion. In fact, the surface roughness of the original substrates may be different, and there is no polishing step in the surface preparation section to minimize the variation of surface roughness of both nylon and SS substrates.
Response: Thank you for your constructive suggestion. We have already measured the surface roughness of the samples after treatment with dopamine and peptide, and the related contents were added in the revised manuscript and the supplementary files (Table S2).
- Line 254-255:
‘After dopamine and peptide treatment, the OD values decreased sharply, and it caused by the mild antibacterial ability of dopamine and the antibacterial/bactericidal ability of the extracted peptide.’
- According to this statement, what could be the reasons that the absorbance of PA-DA decreased sharply while SS-DA just slightly decreased compared to PA and SS, respectively?
Response: Sorry for the mistake. The OD value of PA-DA samples value is 1.19, not 0.19, and there was a data input error when creating the bar chart. We have revised the bar chart with the correct data and made modifications in the revised version.
- Figure 5:
- For better comparison, the plots in Figure 5 could be combined into one plot similar to Figure 4. Alternatively, if the authors intend to separate the plots, the scale of Fig. 5A and 5B should be the same, for example, the maximum absorbance should be 1.6 for both plots.
Response: Thank you for your great suggestion. We have already combined the 2 plots into one in Figure 5.
- Line 290-303:
The conclusion section should not only mention the purposes of each characterization method but also summarize the key findings of the current work.
Response: Thank you for your constructive suggestion. We have already summarized the key findings of the current work in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 4 Report
The photo plate of Viola philippica is to be included.
Conclusion- Line 5 were analyse surface? not clear- Rephrase the line
Author Response
Reviewer 4: (Marked them in purple)
- The photo plate of Viola philippica is to be included.
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. The photo plate of Viola philippica was added to the supplementary files (Figure S2).
- Conclusion- Line 5 were analyse surface? not clear- Rephrase the line
Response: Thank you for your suggestion. We have already rephrased the line in the revised manuscript.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
well done
ok
Reviewer 2 Report
Many thanks to the authors for responding to my comments.
The manuscript may be published in its present form.
Reviewer 3 Report
In this revised manuscript, I have noticed that the authors have addressed most of my major and minor concerns, which substantially improves the manuscript's quality. As a result, I would recommend publishing this manuscript in Coatings.
