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The authors have reasonably addressed the questions raised during the previous review.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Paula Soares, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
This is the second revision of this manuscript. The authors responded adequately and transparently to all my comments. I have no further questions or comments
Adequate
Valid
No further comments
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The authors have reasonably addressed the questions raised during the previous review.
Several issues to be clarified.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and that any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
General
The manuscript is well designed, and the key elements were provided
Study design and technical methods are fully prescribed.
Methods:
Have to add the link to the neonatal sepsis-related datasets GSE69686 and GSE95233.
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It is not clear if these datasets are for early or late onset sepsis or congenital infection.
What was the operational definition used for neonatal sepsis in this dataset?
What were the inclusion criteria for the control group?
Results and findings still need to be validated to confirm the role of the studied genes as a cause of sepsis, prognosis.
Discussion and conclusion
What was the basis for the study results to conclude [Based on biomarkers, the study further explored the relationship between these genes and immune infiltration and verified the expression of genes using RT-qPCR, providing a diagnosis and treatment of NESE.
Editing :
Write a full test the first time, before using abbreviations, e.g., MRGs.line 24
Appropriate and fully described.
Results and findings still need to be validated to confirm the role of the studied genes as a cause of sepsis, prognosis. I suggest adding to the limitations.
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In this study, Zhong et al. identified mitochondrial genes associated with neonatal sepsis using publicly available datasets. Strengths of the manuscript include the correct application of methods and validation of the results, both in a separate public dataset and on a new cohort. There are only minor comments that need to be addressed.
Minor comments
1. Please cite MitoCarta3, STRING, etc. in the manuscript instead of providing the links to the website.
2. Please edit the manuscript for appropriate and correct use of language. Terms like “By the way” (line 118) need to be replaced. The sentence in lines 48-49 is one example of a sentence that needs editing. Another example is the sentence in lines 308-310. One possible edit for this could be “Given these contradictory results, further research is needed to understand the relationship between high PDSS1 expression and CoQ10 synthesis, as well as the precise role and prognostic significance of PDSS1 in NESE.”
3. In continuation of the above point, the title could be modified as “Bioinformatics-based identification and validation of mitochondria-related genes associated with neonatal sepsis”.
4. In Figure 3, please include the names of the genes in panels C-H. This will improve the readability of the figure.
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