Transcriptomic Analysis of Resistant and Susceptible Eggplant Genotypes (Solanum melongena L.) Provides Insights into Phytophthora capsici Infection Defense Mechanisms
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsPlease find enclosed my comments
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
English must be improved, the comments attached indicate most errors identified
Author Response
Thank you so much for taking the valuable time to review our manuscript. we have critically revised the manuscript and addressed each comment and valuable suggestion. We appreciate your recommendable job that has enabled us to improve the quality of our manuscript. Please see the attachment of our point-by-point responses to your comments and suggestions. please note that the changes made are traceable by 'track change mode' in the manuscript and lines have also changed due to vast modifications. with this revisions returning to you we hope we have adequately addressed the concerns and looking forward to positive feedback. Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors, I consider the manuscript you have submitted to be a highly comprehensive research paper that provides a fundamental understanding of the resistance and susceptibility of eggplant plants to P. capsici.
However, I have identified some points that could be improved, clarified, or changed.
Phytophthora capsici, Agrobacterium and SmPTI6 gene are not italicized in some cases; please review.
Lines 66-68: In plants, proteins as sociated with disease resistance operate as key immune receptors, tasked with detecting pathogens and activating strong defense responses. Please, add references.
Line 126: Evaluations of the fruits were conducted at 0, 1, 3 and 5 3 days post-inoculation (dpi). 53. Is 53 correct? Isn't 5 correct?
And why use these harvest times? Please clarify.
Please indicate the ng of cDNA used for the qRT-PCRs.
Lines 251-254. . Additionally, concerning the variations in the number of up-regulated and down-regulated genes for each genotype at distinct time points, the analysis revealed that the number of down-regulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) was greater than that of up-regulated DEGs in both cultivar genotypes (Figure 2A). Please improve the wording and avoid using “greater”; instead, use numerical data or percentages.
Figure 3 is not of good quality; it appears blurry. Improve it.
Line 313. The period is missing.
Line 378. "10 l ate blight resistance protein homolog". Please, clarify.
As a suggestion, I would leave the information corresponding to “VIGS-mediated silencing of SmPTI6” out of the article and supplement it with further analysis for a later publication, it seems like a separate piece in your paper. Instead of including that section, I suggest that you add a figure that integrates all the information obtained. The individual diagrams are very good, but something is missing that shows everything condensed.
Please standardize the supplementary tables.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
I suggest reviewing and improving it.
Author Response
Thank you so much for your critical comments and suggestions that have enabled us to improve our manuscript. We have revised our manuscript and addressed the concerns adequately. Please find the attachment of our point-by-point response to the comments and suggestions. Thank you so much and we hope for positive feedback.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have presented the experiment well with good results; however the following few suggestions can improve the manuscript.
1) Text formatting errors: Line 46 "[2]", reference citation is underlined which is not required by the format of the manuscript.
2) Line 47: Phytophthora capsici, the scientific name should be italic.
3) Figure 1 needs revisions. It seems that Figure 1 does not correctly represents the data for fruit presentation. Eggplant is normally dark colored when ripe. The authors mentioned in the 2.1. Plant Materials, in line 118-119 "Briefly, 25 days after flowering, detached green eggplant fruits, cultivated in a greenhouse" were used for the further studies, while the fruit color for the resistant genotype G42 is represented to be green in all the stages while the susceptible is dark colored for all the evaluation stages. There is some contradiction here which need to be explained and revised for better representation of data.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNeeds minor revisions.
Author Response
Thank you so much and we appreciate your critical comments and suggestions that have enabled us to improve our manuscript. We have revised our manuscript and addressed the concerns to the best of our knowledge. Please find the attachment of our point-by-point response to the comments and suggestions. Thank you so much and we hope for positive feedback.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI don't understand why you wrote the parentheses when referring to resistant and susceptible cultivars, those parentheses are not correct, throughout the entire document. The rest of the corrections are fine.
Author Response
Comment1: I don't understand why you wrote the parentheses when referring to resistant and susceptible cultivars, those parentheses are not correct, throughout the entire document. The rest of the corrections are fine.
Response 1: Thank you for this. We have removed the parentheses applied during our revisions for the resistant and susceptible cultivars.
We again appreciate your time and effort for critically reviewing our manuscript in order to improve its content and general quality. We are therefore looking forward to a positive response regarding its acceptance for publication. Thank you.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
Thank you for responding to each of my suggestions and addressing them.
I believe your manuscript is practically ready, I only suggest the following:
Add a citation in line 311 (Because exposure to pathogens in eggplant is known to involve the induction of 310 defense-response genes).
I think Figure 3 still looks a little blurry. Please improve it.
Figure 13 is quite illustrative, but it does not make clear which genes are differentially expressed depending on whether the eggplant variety is susceptible or not. I suggest indicating some key genes, emphasizing SmPTI6, which was studied in greater detail.
And I still believe that the SmPTI6 study could be separated, as it presents a lot of data from the entire analysis, but I respect your decision to leave it included.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageNone.
Author Response
- Add a citation in line 311 (Because exposure to pathogens in eggplant is known to involve the induction of 310 defense-response genes).
Response 1: Thank you, we have added the reference
- I think Figure 3 still looks a little blurry. Please improve it.
Response 2: Figure 3 represents cluster analysis of DEGS. Even after repeating the analysis, the bands remain the same due to the many genes involved. This is a normal occurrence in cluster analysis; however, the labels are clear. We are very sorry about this occurrence.
- Figure 13 is quite illustrative, but it does not make clear which genes are differentially expressed depending on whether the eggplant variety is susceptible or not. I suggest indicating some key genes, emphasizing SmPTI6, which was studied in greater detail.
Response 3: We have modified the figure and included some of the key genes representing either upregulation or downregulation between G42 and EP28 to inform resistance or susceptibility responses.
- And I still believe that the SmPTI6study could be separated, as it presents a lot of data from the entire analysis, but I respect your decision to leave it included.
Response 4: We appreciate you concern on this data. We still would like to maintain it in this article as we believe it contributes significantly to our overall results and discussions. Thank you very much for understanding our plea.
We appreciate your candid review that has enabled us to improve the quality of our manuscript. Thank you so much and we hope for a positive response.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAuthors have revised and provided justifications to the suggested revisions. The manuscript is good to go for publication.
Author Response
Comment 1: Authors have revised and provided justifications to the suggested revisions. The manuscript is good to go for publication.
Response 1: Thank you so much for your critical review of our manuscript. We appreciate your efforts to improve the quality of our manuscript.
