PONE-D-19-16966

Artificial fingerprints for cross-comparison of forensic DNA and protein recovery methods

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hewitt,

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In the current manuscript, the authors described a method to generate customizable artificial fingerprints that can be used for benchmarking fingerprint collection and extraction processes. Overall, the manuscript is well-written and easy to follow.

By comparing the content and quality of DNA/protein and proteomic profiles in human and artificial fingerprints, the authors concluded that the artificial fingerprints they produced could benefit the laboratory work of forensic casework. However, I have several concerns and questions regarding this work:

1. No statistical analysis mentioned.

2. How many samples were tested for each of the experiments? How many times were the experiments repeated?

3. According to the data shown in Figure 3B, it seems that there are limited overlapping proteins in human and artificial fingerprints, in both metal and glass surface. If so, how could you claim that the proteomic profiles of human and artificial fingerprints are similar?

4. Why only tested on glass and metal surfaces?

5. What “metal” did you test on?

6. The usability of the artificial fingerprints in forensic field is still unclear – the authors should test (or at least discuss) the potential downsides of these artificial fingerprints. E.g., storage? Degradation rate of DNA/protein?

7. The duplicate loadings in Figure 2C did not seem to be equal.

Reviewer #2: It is an interesting work and may be useful to better assess recovery techniques for touch depositions. However, I have some questions and considerations toward these work:

1. How many donors or volunteers in your study and what is the inclusion criteria?

2. There is no statistical analysis in the study.

3. If your artificial fingerprint products be used commercially in the future, what measures will you take to control the products' quality? Eg. How much %-matched for the gene/protein profile will be consiered of “good-quality”?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Artificial fingerprints for cross-comparison of forensic DNA and protein recovery methods

PONE-D-19-16966R1

Dear Dr. Hewitt,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Andy T. Y. Lau, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All the comments and concerns from the both reviewers have been appropriately addressed by the authors. I have no further question.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No