Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to congratulate all the authors for the review article titled "Bioprospecting of Bixa orellana L. for the selection of characters with biological activity." The article provides an overview of the medicinal and biological properties of Bixa orellana (commonly known as annatto or achiote) and mainly focuses on its potential applications in pharmacology, cancer therapy, and antimicrobial activity. In addition, the research provides divergent sources on plant's organs, extraction methods, and various biochemical classes. In the context of biological activity, they had highlighted potential benefits to cancer and infectious diseases. The biological activity is proposed to be due to active molecules/secondary metabolites like carotenoids, alkaloids, and flavonoids. I would recommend authors use professional editing before the final/revised manuscript is published online. Probably they can provide graphical abstract ifpossible.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article, presented in the journal "Metabolites", is a review devoted to the bioprocessing of the plant Bixa orellana and its metabolites in order to select characteristics with biological activity. The main objective of the study was to identify biopromising variables based on a meta-analysis of 28 sources of information. The authors of the article conducted a detailed analysis of various variables associated with Bixa orellana, including extraction organs, extraction methods and 63 biochemical classes of substances, as well as their biological activity. This is a comprehensive approach that allows for a more complete understanding of the potential of this plant for scientific and practical purposes. The article may be accepted for publication after minor revision. 1) The introduction should be expanded a bit, perhaps with some illustrations added. Perhaps figure 1 should be moved from the results and discussion part. 2) Lines 41-44: please add to the sentence that these substances are contained in these seeds. Otherwise, it seems that these seeds are of interest because bixin and norbixin simply exist in the world. Also with alkaloids, terpenes, etc. - have been identified, that's clear, but are we still talking about seeds that contained these compounds or they identified as independent substances? 3) Line 60 – Scifin der should be corrected 4)Table 2 – for readers who are not very familiar with this kind of research it will not be clear what =№ means, please provide a description under the table

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Article submitted for review entitled "Bioprospecting of Bixa Orellana L. for the selection of characters with biological activity" describes a meta-analysis of biological activity data from Bixa Orellana seed and leaf extracts. In my opinion, the article cannot be accepted in its current form and should be rejected. Reading this review article raises more questions than answers. A review article should clearly communicate the knowledge in a given field.

First, the methodological part should be improved. It is described in general terms. If statistical methods are used, criteria should be clearly defined, e.g. from what level antioxidant activity is taken into account, how anticancer activity is characterized, what value is considered antimicrobial activity, etc. There are no specific numerical values ​​given. The isolation site cannot be defined as a genotype. A genotype is a set of genes. In this case, one can possibly speak of a phenotype (i.e., the level of synthesized compounds).

In my opinion, Figure 1 is misleading due to the raw data used. It is not possible to create a cladogram of the genotype taking into account the plant organ, extraction method and biological activity because they do not refer to the set of genes. If publications were taken into account, in some works only leaves were taken into account, in some only seeds and in some both organs. This distorts the picture because the data is not uniform in all works. The same applies to the extraction method. In each work these methods may differ slightly, which is why compounds are extracted in a different way. The same isolation method in all works can be the basis for such a statistical analysis. Otherwise the analysis is distorted.

The description of the results concerning "genotypes" from different origins is written in too general a manner. There is no information about the concentrations used, the percentage of inhibition of tumor cell growth, the concentrations of the killing concentration, etc. This is unacceptable in scientific review papers.

Table 6 is very extensive, but its description is very poor, which makes it incomprehensible to the reader. No broader conclusions are drawn from it, e.g. "the most optimal extraction method is ethanol extraction". Additionally, the description includes antiproliferative activity, which is not in the table, which is very misleading.

In conclusion, I believe that the meta-analysis has the potential to be a good review article, however, it is necessary to clarify the methodology, not to use the term "genotype" because, since genome studies were conducted, the description of the results should be precise and more detailed and should explain the obtained statistics in an accessible way. I suggest to reject the article with the possibility of resubmitting after thorough corrections.    

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

All suggestions were taken into account and the quality of the work has improved significantly. I believe that the work is acceptable in its current form.