A Comparison of Three Artificial Rumen Systems for Rumen Microbiome Modeling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript "Comparison of three artificial rumen systems for rumen microbiome modeling" has been reviewed. It described diverse metrics of three different ARS over a five-day fermentation period and compared them to in vivo rumen metrics. Authors found that diverse metrics of three different ARS over a five-day fermentation period and compared them to in vivo rumen metrics.Despite much interest for readers, the presentation should be extensive treated, below are my main concerns:

(1) Title: The title is too simple to express what the work wants to do?

(2) Abstract: The section is so long with many background, so please shorten it into below 250 words and highlight the main result, not just the conclusions!

(3) Line 22: hrs? it should be h or hours, I guess.

(4) Line 292: Qiime 2 2022.2? What it means for 2022.2?

(5) Figure 3 to Figure 5: The current presentation is not easy to catch the results, please change them into tables!

(6) Table 1 to table 2: It is really hard to read the data, please display them into a instuitive way.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

You can navigate through the document using the bookmarks embedded in the PDF.

Responses to your comments start at page 1.

On page 10 of the PDF we included a copy of the revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well presented, thus I have only minor considerations.

Line 574: "3.316. S rRNA..." the number 3 must be better separated from 16.

Figure 5 should be inserted in subsection 3.2

Lines 534 to 535: "Whereas most in vivo metrics of interest were replicated in the different ARS, replication of the in vivo redox potential was not achieved in either of the engineered systems. " Looking for pH, conductivity, VFA, microbiota profile, it does not seem similar to natural in vivo rume!!!

Also, it would be interesting evaluate the impact of some food aditive on the best system...

The paper in my opinion was very well written, I only noticed that what was written from lines 105 to 107 was previously informed at the beginning.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

You can navigate through the document using the bookmarks embedded in the PDF.

Responses to your comments start at page 4.

On page 10 of the PDF we included a copy of the revised manuscript. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is review of the manuscript “Comparison of three artificial rumen systems for rumen micro biome modelling” 

This is very interesting manuscript and I recommend to accept for publication after minor revision.

There are few recommendations for the manuscript correction – 

Abstract. In this section is too long part of introduction. Could you make it shorter?

Please revise doble space in whole manuscript and remove it. 

L18 -  “five-day fermentation” -  “five-days fermentation”

L26-27 “Further work will be necessary to further improve the capabilities of the tested in-vitro rumen platforms and to standardize the methodology for large-scale application” Please rework this sentence and remove second “further”. 

L29- 30. In my opinion there are too many keywords. Please select 5- 6. 

L119. Figure 1. I recommend to move this figure and all explanation of it to materials and methods section. 

L130. Where is chemical composition of TMR?

L136. Could you provide hours? 

L144. How long took transportation to the laboratory?

L196. “Conductivity, pH, and temperature measurements were taken every 24 hrs”. Could you add time? 

L205. “Gas bags were also collected every 24 hrs”. Could you add time? 

L307 and fw – it is necessary to give “figures” and “tables” in bold? 

Discussion. Could you provide information about some weaknesses of your study?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

You can navigate through the document using the bookmarks embedded in the PDF.

Responses to your comments start at page 6.

On page 10 of the PDF we included a copy of the revised manuscript. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please provide more results instead of only simple conclusions in the section of Abstract, even as previous comments suggested.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the additional suggestion.

Please see attachment for document that will contain the revised abstract with previous edits (from round 1) accepted and now showing edits that were made in response to the new comments by Reviewer #2.

The revised abstract now has 247 words and includes more results as requested by the reviewer. To remain within word count some of the "conclusions" were removed - which should align with the reviewers suggestion as well.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf