Pectin, Lignin and Disease Resistance in Brassica napus L.: An Update
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The presented manuscript “Engineering pectin and lignin opens new opportunities for enhancing disease resistance in Brassica napus” discusses the impact of pectin and lignin plant-pathogen interactions, emphasizing the aspect of B. napus resistance to bacterial and fungi pathogens. The manuscript is interesting, well written and represents a fresh view on the interconnection of cell wall metabolism and plant immunity. However, the question of real practical application (engineering) of this knowledge is only briefly discussed in the conclusion. In my opinion, the title is a little bit exaggerating.
Authors focus on plant immunity and resistance to pathogens, but do not specify what types of pathogens: it should be mentioned that this review doesn’t include viral pathogens.
Authors discuss such cell wall-modifying enzymes as PMEs but not mention an important product of cell wall pectin demethylation – gaseous methanol – that plays a significant role in plant-pathogen interactions (see 10.3389/fpls.2014.00101, 10.1371/journal.ppat.1002640) inducing resistance to bacterial pathogens but facilitating viral infection.
Minor points:
- I suggest that authors move the Figure from the conclusion to the introduction or the main body of the text, because this figure illustrates the whole story discussed. And the figure caption contains some sentences repeated from the introduction. Authors should make the caption more succinct.
- check how S. sclerotiorum is written: in some places “Sclerotiorum” is capitalized
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for these useful suggestions. We have addressed the comments. Please see detailed information in the manuscript
- We have moved figure 1 from the section of conclusion to the introduction and made the figure legend more succinct.
- We have stressed that viral pathogens were out of the scope of the discussion in this ms at the end of the introduction. Line 65-67.
- We have added a paragraph in the ms to discuss the role of PMEs/PMEIs in regulating plant immunity. Line 142-156.
- We have checked the format of S. sclerotiorum throughout the text.
5 The title has been changed as “Pectin and lignin in disease resistance in Brassica napus: an update”
6 Strategies for engineering cell wall components have been discussed in more detail in the conclusion. Line 426-439.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is a quite interesting review about how to enhance disease resistance by pectin and lignin engineering in Brassica napus.
The authors did not include line numbering, which makes it very difficult to pinpoint errors precisely.
Page 2
Explanations of abbreviations should appear when this abbreviation appears for the first time, e.g. DAMPs is explained after 5 time of usage
Page 3 and others
You missed full stop in S. sclerotiorum, in other part of Page 3 capital letter in sclerotiorum is not necessary, e.c.t. - check all text, more similar mistakes are present
I believe Latin names in Table 1 should be italic
Page 5
There's a large piece of text at the beginning of page 5 where no works are cited but the information which are reviewed there are not common knowledge, so authors should add some references in this part
Figure 1
General idea is that figure caption should be self-explanatory which means that you need to add all explanations for all abbreviations which you used. So probably the end of the last paragraph on page 7 you should cut and paste to Fig. 1 caption because this paragraph makes no sense as it is now.
Delate the numbering from the glossary part
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for these useful suggestions. We have addressed the comments according to the advices.
1 We have explained DAMP when it appears for the first time in the ms, and checked all other abbreviations. please look at line 44-46.
2 We have checked the format of S. sclerotiorum throughout the ms.
3 We have made the latin names in table 1 italic.
4 We have cited a few references where needed as suggested by the reviewer. Line 275-281.
5 Yes, the end of the last paragraph on page 7 has been cut and pasted to Fig. 1 caption. It was part of the figure caption but became an independent paragraph after the ms was uploaded via the system.
6 The numbering from the glossary part has been deleted.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript ‘Engineering pectin and lignin opens new opportunities for enhancing disease resistance in Brassica napus’ presents long descriptions of information but scarce interpretation or comparison with other studies. A review should provide a unique point of view on the topic, integrating multiple studies and finding common factors, areas that should be further addressed, and recommendations to researchers. Moreover, it should bring original illustrations. Unfortunately, this work provides few of these aspects, which confer novelty and value to reviews.
Therefore, the manuscript as it is will not attract the attention of readers. It is necessary to include a representative chemical structure of pectin and lignin. Additional Tables and Figures are also required.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for all of the useful suggestions. We have added a figure to show the structure of pectin and lignin, please see figure 2. So far, our knowledge regarding cell wall mediated immunity and its transcriptional regulation in B. napus has just started to grow recently, thus integrating relevant information from other species enable us to find the common factors and difference between different species. We have integrated other studies and added interpretations where appropriate, please see line 142-156, line 161-166, line 188-191, line 208-221, line 369-371, line 374-378, line 426-439.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The conclusions section should be more concise. Please present this section as a synthesis of key points. The present version's Conclusions are too long and contain unnecessary information. Please do not use references in this section.
English must be revised, especially in the sections incorporated in the revised version.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for these useful suggestions. Yes, we agree that the content in the conclusion section should be more concise. We have made the section more concise and made some modifications. We have also asked an English native speaker to check through the ms and revised the ms. Please look at the updated ms.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
