Dear Emily,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled "Variant mutation G215C in SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid enhances viral infection via altered genomic encapsidation" for consideration as a Research Article by PLOS Biology.

We are trying to get the confirmation from Nature Communications that your submission was there and the reviewer identities. We will try not to go to another round of review, but it would be good to get all the information possible.

To further continue with the process, we need you to complete your submission by providing the metadata that is required for full assessment. To this end, please login to Editorial Manager where you will find the paper in the 'Submissions Needing Revisions' folder on your homepage. Please click 'Revise Submission' from the Action Links and complete all additional questions in the submission questionnaire.

For the Editorial Manager team, please edit your cover letter to let them know about the previous review and include the name of the journal where the work was previously considered and the manuscript ID it was given. In addition, please upload a response to the reviews as a 'Prior Peer Review' file type, which should include the reports in full and a point-by-point reply detailing how you have or plan to address the reviewers' concerns, this should include all rounds of review and e-mail exchanges with the editor of NatComms.

Once your full submission is complete, your paper will undergo a series of checks in preparation for peer review. After your manuscript has passed the checks it will be sent out for review. To provide the metadata for your submission, please Login to Editorial Manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology) within two working days, i.e. by Feb 23 2025 11:59PM.

During the process of completing your manuscript submission, you will be invited to opt-in to posting your pre-review manuscript as a bioRxiv preprint. Visit http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/preprints for full details. If you consent to posting your current manuscript as a preprint, please upload a single Preprint PDF.

Feel free to email us at plosbiology@plos.org if you have any queries relating to your submission.

Kind regards,

Melissa

Melissa Vazquez Hernandez, Ph.D.

Associate Editor

PLOS Biology

mvazquezhernandez@plos.org

Dear Emily,

Thank you for your patience while we considered your revised manuscript "Variant mutation G215C in SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid enhances viral infection via altered genomic encapsidation" for publication as a Research Article at PLOS Biology. This revised version of your manuscript has been evaluated by the PLOS Biology editors and Academic Editor with relevant expertise.

Based on our Academic Editor's assessment of your revision, we are likely to accept this manuscript for publication, provided you satisfactorily address the remaining editorial requests. Please also make sure to address the following data and other policy-related requests.

a) We would strongly recommend that you deposit your plasmids to Addgene to comply with our Open Science values

b) You may be aware of the PLOS Data Policy, which requires that all data be made available without restriction: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/data-availability. For more information, please also see this editorial: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001797

Please supply the numerical values either in the a supplementary file or as a permanent DOI’d deposition for the following figures:

Figure 2B, 3BD, 4CE, 5BCDE, 6ABCEFG, 7B, S2CD, S5A, S6ABDE

NOTE: the numerical data provided should include all replicates AND the way in which the plotted mean and errors were derived (it should not present only the mean/average values).

c) Please cite the location of the data clearly in all relevant main and supplementary Figure legends, e.g. “The data underlying this Figure can be found in S1 Data” or “The data underlying this Figure can be found in https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.XXXXX”

d) We require the original, uncropped and minimally adjusted images supporting all blot and gel results reported in the Figures 2ACD, 3AC, 4BD, 6D, S2ABCDE, S2AB, S4, S6C.

We will require these files before a manuscript can be accepted so please prepare and upload them now. Please carefully read our guidelines for how to prepare and upload this data: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/figures#loc-blot-and-gel-reporting-requirements

e) Please provide the tree files for the phylogenetic trees in Figures 1A

f) this is also not necessary, but we would like to encourage that if you have any additional microscopy pictures related to Figures 5F, 7A, S5B, S7, you can upload them to repositories like Zenodo

g) Please ensure that your Data Statement in the submission system accurately describes where your data can be found and is in final format, as it will be published as written there.

h) Per journal policy, if you have generated any custom code during the course of this investigation, please make it available without restrictions upon publication. Please ensure that the code is sufficiently well documented and reusable, and that your Data Statement in the Editorial Manager submission system accurately describes where your code can be found.

Please note that we cannot accept sole deposition of code in GitHub, as this could be changed after publication. However, you can archive this version of your publicly available GitHub code to Zenodo. Once you do this, it will generate a DOI number, which you will need to provide in the Data Accessibility Statement (you are welcome to also provide the GitHub access information). See the process for doing this here: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content

As you address these items, please take this last chance to review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the cover letter that accompanies your revised manuscript.

We expect to receive your revised manuscript within two weeks.

To submit your revision, please go to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology/ and log in as an Author. Click the link labelled 'Submissions Needing Revision' to find your submission record. Your revised submission must include the following:

- a cover letter that should detail your responses to any editorial requests, if applicable, and whether changes have been made to the reference list

- a Response to Reviewers file that provides a detailed response to the reviewers' comments (if applicable, if not applicable please do not delete your existing 'Response to Reviewers' file.)

- a track-changes file indicating any changes that you have made to the manuscript.

NOTE: If Supporting Information files are included with your article, note that these are not copyedited and will be published as they are submitted. Please ensure that these files are legible and of high quality (at least 300 dpi) in an easily accessible file format. For this reason, please be aware that any references listed in an SI file will not be indexed. For more information, see our Supporting Information guidelines:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/s/supporting-information

*Published Peer Review History*

Please note that you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. Please see here for more details:

https://plos.org/published-peer-review-history/

*Press*

Should you, your institution's press office or the journal office choose to press release your paper, please ensure you have opted out of Early Article Posting on the submission form. We ask that you notify us as soon as possible if you or your institution is planning to press release the article.

*Protocols deposition*

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Melissa

Melissa Vazquez Hernandez, Ph.D.

Associate Editor

mvazquezhernandez@plos.org

PLOS Biology

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Dear Emily,

Thank you for the submission of your revised Research Article "Variant mutation G215C in SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid enhances viral infection via altered genomic encapsidation" for publication in PLOS Biology. On behalf of my colleagues and the Academic Editor, Andy Mehle, I am pleased to say that we can in principle accept your manuscript for publication, provided you address any remaining formatting and reporting issues. These will be detailed in an email you should receive within 2-3 business days from our colleagues in the journal operations team; no action is required from you until then. Please note that we will not be able to formally accept your manuscript and schedule it for publication until you have completed any requested changes.

Please take a minute to log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pbiology/, click the "Update My Information" link at the top of the page, and update your user information to ensure an efficient production process.

PRESS

We frequently collaborate with press offices. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper at this point, to enable them to help maximise its impact. If the press office is planning to promote your findings, we would be grateful if they could coordinate with biologypress@plos.org. If you have previously opted in to the early version process, we ask that you notify us immediately of any press plans so that we may opt out on your behalf.

We also ask that you take this opportunity to read our Embargo Policy regarding the discussion, promotion and media coverage of work that is yet to be published by PLOS. As your manuscript is not yet published, it is bound by the conditions of our Embargo Policy. Please be aware that this policy is in place both to ensure that any press coverage of your article is fully substantiated and to provide a direct link between such coverage and the published work. For full details of our Embargo Policy, please visit http://www.plos.org/about/media-inquiries/embargo-policy/.

Thank you again for choosing PLOS Biology for publication and supporting Open Access publishing. We look forward to publishing your study. 

Sincerely, 

Melissa

Melissa Vazquez Hernandez, Ph.D., Ph.D.

Associate Editor

PLOS Biology

mvazquezhernandez@plos.org