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The manuscript is now Accepted
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Gerard Lazo, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
Please address the remaining concern from the Section Editor:
“The way the data was presented made getting to actual sequence data very difficult. I tried following the links which pointed to a database, yet all I was able to grasp were raw files without any clean annotations to get me to the NAC gene sequence date. The authors really need to make what they are presenting more accessible to the reader rather than having them follow a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. I see that the author has done this similarly with other gene families. In general I am basically satisfied that there was a mission to characterize this gene with respect to others within the gene subfamily grouping, but getting it to the readers should be done in a way to make the information more accessible rather than having us follow in a dust trail. I would recommend the authors be a bit more thoughtful on how the data is made available"
The Section Editor has commented on your manuscripts. Please see their following comments and take appropriate action in terms of accessibility of information provided by the author:
“The way the data was presented made getting to actual sequence data very difficult. I tried following the links which pointed to a database, yet all I was able to grasp were raw files without any clean annotations to get me to the NAC gene sequence date. The authors really need to make what they are presenting more accessible to the reader rather than having them follow a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. I see that the author has done this similarly with other gene families. In general I am basically satisfied that there was a mission to characterize this gene with respect to others within the gene subfamily grouping, but getting it to the readers should be done in a way to make the information more accessible rather than having us follow in a dust trail. I would recommend the authors be a bit more thoughtful on how the data is made available. This done, I may be likely to accept the decision.”
Overall manuscript has been improved with writing and clarity.
Everything is clear and methods are well described.
Finding are well explained.
Great work and interesting finding.
Reviewers have suggested multiple new experiments and highlighted a major revision for this manuscript. Please address all the concerns and submit it again.
In this manuscript, the authors have studied the effect PheNAC3 over expression in Arabidopsis. Overall, the manuscript is nicely written and provides all the necessary details to understand or to reproduce the work.
However, there are few questions that need to be addressed before the manuscript can be considered for the publication. These questions are related to the figures and their analyses and include:
Figure 1B: Why different domains are in different color? What does a particular color signify? And what do the integers in each domain represent?
Figure 2A: As per the text (line 197), GFP control is localized throughout the cell. However, the GFP (control experiment) signal in Figure 2A is localized to the periphery. Please comment on this. Moreover, I see a co-localized signal of GFP and DAPI in the lower panel suggesting that the GFP control is also localized to the nuclei. Please comment on this.
Figure 2B: Please add a figure-panel showing the plasmid map details of GAL4-PheNAC3
Figure 3 Dto I: Please specify the conc. of different chemicals (ABA, MeJA, NaCl etc) in the graphs.
Figure 4A: Briefly describe the phenotypic differences (if any) between Col and OE-PheNAC3 plants
Figure 4B: What do G1, G2, G3 stand for?
no comments
The manuscript should be revised for the english. Few examples of sentences that need to be revised:
"Normally, bamboo plants expend so much energy during flowering and fruiting that will senescence and die shortly thereafter."
"… very high sequence similarity…"
Minor comments:
1. Describe the full form of acronyms at their first occurrences. Such as NAC, WRKY, bZIP, MYB, and AP2/EREBP
2. Briefly describe the terminology at their first occurrence. Such as: precocious senescence, ONAC011, heading time etc.
3. “PheNAC3, which has high 93 similarity to ONAC011”
4. Line 84: “PeNAC1” Is it PheNAC1 or PeNAC1?
5. Line 59: “The transactivation activity of the PheNAC3 protein was evaluated according to Chen et al. (2011).” Describe the method in brief.
6. Line 163: “Arabidopsis” should be italic
7. Line 179: Do not use words like “great similarity”. Instead specify the value or write > XX%
8. Line 185: “very high sequence similarity” specify the value.
Please mention the sequence similarity value? Please specify if mentioned similarity is amino acid- based or the DNA-sequence based?
No Comment
No comment
No comments
Major comments:
1. All the experiments are done by ectopically overexpressing PheNAC3 in Arabidopsis but what would happen if these experiments (at least overexpression or downregulation) are performed in moso bamboo transgenics? I know it is not easy to modify the genomes of many plants but can authors try? I would suggest to do at least one experiment in mono bamboo to confirm their finding. The reason to ask this question is because sequence homolog protein can have different roles in their native organisms and by studying in lab models, authors might miss some new information about that given protein. This will also increase the impact of the work.
2. Abstract is the first attraction of any article. Current abstract is not very clearly written specially use of tenses, for eg: “PheNAC3 belonged to the NAC1 subgroup and had a conserved NAC domain on the N-terminus”: should be “PheNAC3 belong to the NAC1 subgroup...” . Please format the abstract with proper use of tense. Sentences flow better in active voice, so try to use some active voice in abstract.
3. Introduction should be more fluid. It misses the connection between paragraphs. In the last para of the introduction it is not clear why authors studied PheNAC3. Even-though the reasoning is given in method section line 116-119 but motivation in introduction is missing.
Minor Comments:
4. Line 43: “that will senescence” change to “that they will senescence”
5. Line 176: change “great” to “high”
6. In fig 2A, I see a localized signal in GFP only. Can authors explain why there is a localization signal in GFP only? Is the PheNAC3-GFP fusion is functional?
7. In fig 2B, the blue colour is not very prominent. Authors should provide better images.
8. Why there is higher expression of PheNAC3 gene in mature than old leaves while old leaves should have more senescence and thus higher expression in Fig 3B?
9. Fig 3 contains too many panels. Authors do not need to show all the panels in main figure. I would suggest to divide the results (Expression profile of PheNAC3 during senescence of moso bamboo leaves and shoots) between natural and induced senescence or move some results to supplementary information.
10. In some panels of fig3, Y-axis contains too many ticks. Please make them less.
11. What was the criteria behind dividing detached leaves in three categories G1-G3 and why G2 was used to do the experiments? Doesn’t this bias the finding? I would suggest to move RT-PCR (Fig 4C) to supplemental information.
12. I could not understand the use of qRT-PCR data for AtABF4, AtNCED3, AtRD29A and At RD29B (Fig 4E) in the same panel. Authors need to discuss a bit more in the main text (Line 251-256).
13. Panels in Fig 5B are not clear. Please level properly.
14. Line 266-267: Growth and root length (Fig 6) information is only given in images. Can authors provide more information about root length in a quantitative way?
15. Line 269-271: Authors should provide quantitative information before saying significant different in number of lateral roots.
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