Protein Carbonylation as a Reliable Read-Out of Urban Pollution Damage/Protection of Hair Fibers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The manuscript entitled "Protein carbonylation as a reliable read-out of urban pollution damage/protection of hair fibers" was careful read and suggestions/comments are below:

- title did not represent in a full matter the manuscript content.

- please, add more results in the Abstract.

- what was the water temperature used to wash the virgem hair tresses?

- how the hair was exposed to UV? Cut? 

- what were the solutions of the antioxidants? pH? Vehicle?

- please, put figures closer to their call.

- in Conclusions, lines 310-315 were not suitable for this section.

- please, consider to reference more recent research groups' papers.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the insightful comments. All comments made have been addressed and the manuscript has been revised accordingly. Please find below a detailed response to the comments, indicating where changes were introduced in the text of the revised version.

• Title did not represent in a full matter the manuscript content.We take the reviewer comment. We tried to keep a title focused on the results presented in the manuscript. We think that the proposed title synthesizes the main concepts and is supported by the data presented.
• Please, add more results in the Abstract.Additional results have been added in lines 20 and 21 of the abstract.
• What was the water temperature used to wash the virgem hair tresses? The washing steps were eperformed at room temperature (24°C). This information was added in the Material and Methods section (line 88).
• How the hair was exposed to UV? Cut? Yes, hair fibres were cut at the same distance from the shaft root for all the experiments. The obtained portion (1 cm of length) of hair fibres were treated and/or exposed to UV. This information has been added in the revised version (line 91).
• What were the solutions of the antioxidants? pH? Vehicle? We agree with the reviewer that more details are needed. The solution of NAC was made by direct solubilisation in ultra-pure water.The Nickel Bis (Hydroxy Diphenyl Methyl Pyrrolidino Methyl) Pyridinediyl T-Butylisocyano Perchlorate was solubilised in DMSO at the concentration of 4.5 % (w/v) to generate an intermediate solution.  The intermediate solution was immediately used to generate the 0,15% solution by direct dilution in ultra-pure water (milliQ) followed by filtration (0,22 μm) before the application on hair shafts. All these details have been introduced in the revised version on lines 148 to 155.
• Please, put figures closer to their call. We follow the guidelines and inserted the figures on section 3.5
• in Conclusions, lines 310-315 were not suitable for this section.We agree with the reviewer. These lines have been moved to the Results & Discussion section.
• Please, consider to reference more recent research groups' papers.We take the reviewer comment and recent papers has been cited in this revised version (7, 13 and 14)

We hope that these changes have resulted in a significantly improved manuscript that will be judged appropriate for publication in the journal.

Sincerely,

Martin Baraibar

Reviewer 2 Report

Article itself is interesting. Research brings some novel insights from the authors that have done similar research in the past.

Introduction section should be broader.  I would alo suggest that authors expand the section 3.4 Prevention of hair fibers carbonylation by anti-oxidant with adding more literature to make this more interesting for the readers of a journal . 

English language seems fine from my perspective , however, I would sugest that article is checked by native speaker before acceptance,beacuse of some minor flaws: 

For instance Line 75...chemical insults...please use different terminology

line 87: Before be used- maybe before they are used ?

References should be written in according to Instructions for authors.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for the insightful comments. All comments made have been addressed and the manuscript has been revised accordingly. Please find below a detailed response to the comments, indicating where changes were introduced in the text of the revised version.

• Introduction section should be broader.  I would alo suggest that authors expand the section 3.4 Prevention of hair fibers carbonylation by anti-oxidant with adding more literature to make this more interesting for the readers of a journal . We take the reviewer comment. Text has been added in section 3.4 (lines 290-294).
• English language seems fine from my perspective , however, I would suggest that article is checked by native speaker before acceptance, beacuse of some minor flaws: For instance Line 75...chemical insults...please use different terminologyline 87: Before be used- maybe before they are used ? The manuscript has been checked by a native speaker and minor flaws have been corrected in the revised version.

We hope that these changes have resulted in a significantly improved manuscript that will be judged appropriate for publication in the journal.

Sincerely,

Martin Baraibar

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for addressing all raised questions. Please, confirm with the journal if the Abstract must be structured in sections.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, thanks for your comments. Following your suggestion, I've contacted the editor and it is not necessary to revise the structure of the abstract. Please find enclosed a revised version of the article with the figures merged with the main text.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx