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The authors' responses to the reviewers are satisfactory. No further revisions are needed.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Vladimir Uversky, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Basic reporting is good.
Experimental design is good.
Experimental design is good.
The authors have improved the manuscript, so I suggest the manuscript should be accepted for publication.
Interesting experimental research, but some major revisions are required (please, see the reviewers' comments carefully).
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[# PeerJ Staff Note: Please ensure that all review and editorial comments are addressed in a response letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate. #]
The Introduction needs more detail. Specifically, I suggest that the authors need to improve the description regarding the role of Quercitin in CKD to provide more justification for your study, referring to a recent study “Quercetin Treatment Improves Renal Function and Protects the Kidney in a Rat Model of Adenine-Induced Chronic Kidney Disease” by Hu Yang et al. 2018. Moreover, it could be interesting that the authors deepened the theme of CDK; an interesting and recent paper regarding this could be “The Protective Role of Prolyl Oligopeptidase (POP) Inhibition in Kidney Injury Induced by Renal Ischemia–Reperfusion” by Giovanna Casili et al., 2021.
The English language should be improved to ensure that an international audience can clearly understand the text. I suggest to contact a professional editing service to improve English language.
The authors performed a rigorous investigation. The methods were described with sufficient detail and information to replicate.
Conclusions are well stated, linked to original research question and limited to supporting results.
Conclusions are well stated, linked to original research question and limited to supporting results.
See the additional comments.
See the additional comments.
See the additional comments.
In this work, the authors demonstrated Quercetin prevents chronic kidney disease on mesangial cells model through regulating inflammation and TGF-β1/Smad pathway. Several suggestions are made as follows to improve the quality of the manuscript.
1. Title is not suitable. Please change title to “Quercetin prevents chronic kidney disease on mesangial cells model through regulating inflammation and TGF-β1/Smad pathway”.
2. Natural products or traditional Chinese medicine in Chinese herbal compound prescription and isolated compounds has been applied to treatment of CKD through regulating various molecular mechanisms including inflammation and oxidative stress, TGF-β1/Smad, Wnt/β-catenin pathway reported by many publications such as Trends Pharmacol Sci 2018,39(11):937-952; Front Pharmacol 2021,12:655372; Med Res Rev 2020,40(1):54-78. Please summarize pharmacological effects of natural products or traditional Chinese medicine in the introduction section to improve manuscript.
3. Chemicals and Reagents should be provided in this section. Please include both the manufacturer's name and location (including city, state, and country) for specialized equipment and reagents throughout the manuscript.
4.
5. TCM or natural products against CKD by TGF-β1/Smad pathway have been widely reported by several publications, such as Br J Pharmacol 2018,175(13):2689-2708; J Agric Food Chem 2018,66(8):1828-1842; Phytomedicine 2021,93:153774; Phytomedicine 2018,50:50-60; Free Radic Biol Med 2019,134:484-497. Please compare them with quercetin discuss them in the discussion section.
6. TCM or natural products against fibrosis by regulating inflammation and oxidative stress have been widely reported by several publications, such as; Front Med 2021,8:747922; Frontiers Pharmacol 2021,12:800522; Front Pharmacol 2021,12:774414; Phytomedicine 2020,79:153352; Front Pharmacol 2021,12:630210. Several the latest reviews have summarized the application of natural products in renal injury. Please compare them with quercetin discuss them in the discussion section.
7. Scale bar should be provided in Figure 5.
8. The text must be extensively revised by a native English speaker.
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