All reviews of published articles are made public. This includes manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials. Note: This was optional for articles submitted before 13 February 2023.
Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.
The manuscript has been improved and the text is fluent.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Pedro Silva, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
According to the Referees the authors addressed the questions raised during the first round of revision. However, I think that a language revision is needed to remove typos and grammatical errors, and to improve the text.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: The Academic Editor has identified that the English language must be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services - please contact us at copyediting@peerj.com for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title) #]
The article is acceptable
none
no comment
no comments
As you see from their comments, both Referees require some experimental improvements. In addition, Referee 2 recommends a significant revision of the text and manuscript presentation. He also asks to emphasize the novelty of the study and to provide information on cell death processes in Lepidoptera. Please pay attention to these suggestions.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: Please ensure that all review comments are addressed in a rebuttal letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate. It is a common mistake to address reviewer questions in the rebuttal letter but not in the revised manuscript. If a reviewer raised a question then your readers will probably have the same question so you should ensure that the manuscript can stand alone without the rebuttal letter. Directions on how to prepare a rebuttal letter can be found at: https://peerj.com/benefits/academic-rebuttal-letters/ #]
Authors of the manuscript clearly expounded the functions of SlDronc and the pathways involved in Spodoptera littoralis. In this study, they identified an initiator caspase, SlDronc, in Spodoptera littoralis, elaborated that SlDronc have caspase activity, can cleaved and activated effector caspases. Based on the result of overexpression of SlDronc induced apoptosis in SL2 cell and knockdown of SlDronc decreased apoptosis induced by UV irradiation in SL2 cell, indicate that SlDronc is an apoptotic initiator caspase in Spodoptera littoralis. And found that processed forms of SlDronc were increased with present of N-terminally truncated SlIAP and that SlDronc was inhibited by P49. Generally, the topic of this work is interesting, the experiments were performed in a technically sound fashion, and the obtained results seemed to be reasonable for the journal publication requirements. However, the authors should address the following concerns before it can be accepted.
In this study, they identified an initiator caspase, SlDronc, in Spodoptera littoralis, elaborated that SlDronc have caspase activity, can cleaved and activated effector caspases. Based on the result of overexpression of SlDronc induced apoptosis in SL2 cell and knockdown of SlDronc decreased apoptosis induced by UV irradiation in SL2 cell, indicate that SlDronc is an apoptotic initiator caspase in Spodoptera littoralis. And found that processed forms of SlDronc were increased with present of N-terminally truncated SlIAP and that SlDronc was inhibited by P49.
Generally, the topic of this work is interesting, the experiments were performed in a technically sound fashion, and the obtained results seemed to be reasonable for the journal publication requirements.
Authors of the manuscript clearly expounded the functions of SlDronc and the pathways involved in Spodoptera littoralis. In this study, they identified an initiator caspase, SlDronc, in Spodoptera littoralis, elaborated that SlDronc have caspase activity, can cleaved and activated effector caspases. Based on the result of overexpression of SlDronc induced apoptosis in SL2 cell and knockdown of SlDronc decreased apoptosis induced by UV irradiation in SL2 cell, indicate that SlDronc is an apoptotic initiator caspase in Spodoptera littoralis. And found that processed forms of SlDronc were increased with present of N-terminally truncated SlIAP and that SlDronc was inhibited by P49. Generally, the topic of this work is interesting, the experiments were performed in a technically sound fashion, and the obtained results seemed to be reasonable for the journal publication requirements. However, the authors should address the following concerns before it can be accepted.
Major points:
1. Both result 1 and Result 2 are bioinformatics analysis, consider combining the results into Figure 1.
2. In Figure 6C, compared to the mutant group “SlDronc C310A-Flag”, there is no obvious cleaved band in wild group “SlDronc-Flag”?
3. In western blotting, the endogenous antibody and anti-HA antibody cannot specifically bind to the target protein, how to determine the target band? And there is not protein standard marker.
4. In Figure 9B, in the first panel, P49 inhibit the caspase activity of SlDronc, as the dose of P49 increases, why does the cleaved SlDronc show no change? And the second panel, it is suggested to do protein grayscale analysis.
Minor points:
1. Line 223, does the "boring" mean to express the meaning of “containing”?
2. Line 256, “showed activity on none of the selected substrates” should be “showed no activity on the selected substrates”.
3. Line 222, the “posses” and Line 362, the “possess” should be “possesses”, please check the spelling of words in the full text.
4. In Figure 6A, the "SLDronc" group does not see obvious phenomena, it is suggested to use a narrow to mark the apoptotic cells or mark apoptotic body using DAPI; In Figure 6B, P<0.05 means the value is significant, why is there significant between the GFP and MOCK groups? And in Figure 6C, GFP is the most common reporter protein, it should not have two bands, please explain.
This reports Sldronc as an iniater paspase and the results basically accord to previously published data as Drosophila droc. I found there is nothing wrong with the data but feel a little bit of frustration about the novelty. I wanted to learn more about specificity side of Spodoptera littralis since upon metamorphosis larval tissues undergo different modes of remodeling processes. In Drosophila most imaginal tissues arise from the imaginal discs but in Lepidoptera some imaginal tissues undergo transformation from larval tissues. Also, lepidoptera shows variability.
The authors use cell line but we do not know what kind of developmental process the cells undergo in to to. Also, initiation of metamorphosis is controlled by ecdysone signaling pathway and the story should start here, although autocleavage is postulated. I would like the authors to reconsider the structure of manuscript to emphasize the focus of this report as the second report on droc after Drosophila and add some data on how the apoptosis proceeds in natural situationn and clarify the novelty of Spodoptera dronc from fly one.
It should be started with ecdyson signaling cascade and we would like to see morphological changes after knock down or overexpression of the responsible genes.
Methodology and the execusion look fine.
The use of sell line alone is doubtful to understand the function of this gene.
All text and materials provided via this peer-review history page are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.