Gene Expression in Parthenogenic Maize Proembryos

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

The paper is well written and presents the results clearly. I have some comments and suggestions:

1. The qualitiy of the figures (2,3,4) should be improved: bigger fonts and  numbers, Y-axis title could help the understanding. I suggest changing the colors too. The numbers of the Y-axis are unreadable.

2. An overview figure about the different developmental stages of the examined embryos, proembryos and ESs (3-10 DAAPS, 3 DAP etc.) would be very useful for the readers.

line 90: Please, give the meaning of DAAPS abbr. in the text at the first mention.

line 206: in maize proembryos and ESs?

line 305: I think, that a short description of calculation by the 2^-ΔΔCT method in the supplementary material could provide support in the clear understanding of the figures.

Author Response

I would like to thank you for helpful comments and suggestions.

Sincerely, Mikhail Chumakov

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

You have done extensive work of  importance in my opinion and I think yours obtain results and conclusions could interest many researchers and readers. There are fine observations that merit to be published in “Plants”. Although the work is interesting, I think that You should take a count small  modification of this article. I recommend publishing it in "Plants" after correcting listed below suggestions:

1. Because there are a lot of abbreviations in the text, I suggest to create the abbreviation index
2. There is lack information about application meaning of apomixis (e.g. about maintaining heterosis) both in the Introduction both in Results and Discussion chapter.

Introduction:

Line 31: „…were very interesting as a model” –it would be good to elaborate on this thought

Results and Discussion

Line 97: Figure 1 – this figure is of bad quality and there is lack of scale - it should be corrected

Line 115: „Normally” – this expression shoud be changed

Line 120-123: it would be interesting to keep theese embryo sacs in the tissue culture conditions on the media which could allow them to develop.

Line 206: „2.3.2. Histone deacetylase (hdt104) and histone linker (hon101) expression in” - ?

Matrials and Methods

Authors should be more precise on the dates of planting. More information is needed on crop management (fertilization, irrigation, etc.)

Author Response

I would like to thank you for helpful comments and suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Sinmcerely, Mikhail Chumakov

Author Response File: Author Response.docx