Photoprotective effect of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced damage in HaCaT cells

Qiong Li; Depeng Wang; Donghui Bai; Chao Cai; Jia Li; Chengxiu Yan; Shuai Zhang; Zhijun Wu; Jiejie Hao; Guangli Yu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0235515

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 14, 2020
22 Apr 2020 Decision Letter - N. Rajendra Prasad, Editor PONE-D-20-05967 Protective effects of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced photo-aging in HaCaT cells PLOS ONE Dear Author,, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jun 06 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. 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Competing interests can arise in relationship to an organization or another person. Please follow this link to our website for more details on competing interests: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests Additional Editor Comments : • Give the structure of the isolated compound. • The reported photoprotection is due to scavenging UVA-induced ROS or the sunscreen property of the compound?. The authors may have to report the SPF value of the isolated compound. • How do the authors irradiated the HaCaT cells? How many cells used for irradiation. Give the brief methodology of the UVA treatment and/or the polysaccharide treatment. • The authors have not analyzed UVA-mediated photoaging specific markers like matrix metalloproteinases expression or collagen degradation in this study. Therefore, the title may not be like “UVA-induced photoaging”. Either include effect of AP on certain photoaging markers or re-write the title as “Photoprotective effect of AP….” • Additional experiments on the effect of AP against UVA-induced mitDNA damage may further improve the novelty of the present work. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? 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Revision 1
11 May 2020 Author Response Dear Editors: On behalf of my co-authors, we thank you very much for giving us an opportunity to revise our manuscript. And the positive and constructive comments from editor and reviewers on our manuscript entitled “Protective effects of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced photo-aging in HaCaT cells”(ID: PONE-D-20-05967) were highly appreciated These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope to meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red with underline in the paper. We have updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statementaccording to all PLOS ONE policies. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are listed as follows. We would like to express our great appreciation to you and reviewers for comments on our paper again. And we are Looking forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely, Jiejie Hao E-mail: 2009haojie@ouc.edu.cn Additional Editor Comments : • Give the structure of the isolated compound. • The reported photoprotection is due to scavenging UVA-induced ROS or the sunscreen property of the compound?. The authors may have to report the SPF value of the isolated compound. • How do the authors irradiated the HaCaT cells? How many cells used for irradiation. Give the brief methodology of the UVA treatment and/or the polysaccharide treatment. • The authors have not analyzed UVA-mediated photoaging specific markers like matrix metalloproteinases expression or collagen degradation in this study. Therefore, the title may not be like “UVA-induced photoaging”. Either include effect of AP on certain photoaging markers or re-write the title as “Photoprotective effect of AP….” • Additional experiments on the effect of AP against UVA-induced mitDNA damage may further improve the novelty of the present work. Response: Special thanks for your comments. Your suggestions are very valuable and helpful to our further study. 1.We are greatly appreciated your professional comments. we provide the structure of the isolated compound. Additional Editor Comments : • Give the structure of the isolated compound. • The reported photoprotection is due to scavenging UVA-induced ROS or the sunscreen property of the compound?. The authors may have to report the SPF value of the isolated compound. • How do the authors irradiated the HaCaT cells? How many cells used for irradiation. Give the brief methodology of the UVA treatment and/or the polysaccharide treatment. • The authors have not analyzed UVA-mediated photoaging specific markers like matrix metalloproteinases expression or collagen degradation in this study. Therefore, the title may not be like “UVA-induced photoaging”. Either include effect of AP on certain photoaging markers or re-write the title as “Photoprotective effect of AP….” • Additional experiments on the effect of AP against UVA-induced mitDNA damage may further improve the novelty of the present work. Response: Special thanks for your comments. Your suggestions are very valuable and helpful to our further study. 1.We are greatly appreciated your professional comments. we provide the structure of the isolated compound. Fig S1. The structure of AP 2.Great question! It’s valuable to investigate the intrinsic photoprotection mechanisms of AP we observed in our experiments. So we have planned to compare the protective effects between the present AP and enzyme-degraded AP oligosaccharides, and designed to probe both of them by FITC and observe their process of entering the skin cells. Meanwhile, we also designed to detect the ROS production level along with the time of extra- and inter-cells. We hope these experiments would help us know the question you bring for us. Thanks again. 3. First, we planted 8000 cells per well in a 96-well plate and placed it in a constant temperature cell incubator for 12 hours; then, added different concentrations of AP and placed it in a constant temperature cell incubator for 48 hours. After the incubation, the 96-well plate was placed in a UV cross-linker and irradiated with 30J/cm2 UVA; after the irradiation was completed, the medium was replaced and placed in a constant temperature cell incubator for 12 hours, and then, the biochemical indicators were measured. 4. Thanks a lot for your helpful and constructive suggestions. We have re-write the title as “Photoprotective effect of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced damage in HaCaT cells” 5. We are greatly appreciated your professional comments. We will detect the UVA-induced mtDNA damage in our further investigation to compare the difference between the polysaccharides of AP and its oligosaccharides. Reviewer #1: This is an interesting article on the effect of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide (AP) on photo-aging of HaCaT cells by reducing UVA-induced intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and mitochondrial membrane potential, thereby altering ATP content. The authors could also refer to the literature on the positive effect of silver nanoparticles on the reduction of UV-induced damage to HaCaT cells and comment on whether the AP protective mechanism is different from that of silver nanoparticles. Response: Thanks very much for your suggestion. We have made additions marked in red in the revised manuscript according to your suggestion. Please include both an updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in your cover letter. We will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: Special thanks for your comments. We have updated Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statementaccording to all PLOS ONE policies in line 338-344 and line 349-352. Funding This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81973231, 81402982, 31670811), National Science and Technology Major Project for Significant New Drugs Development (2018ZX09735004). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests The authors of Qiong Li, Depeng Wang, Donghui Bai , Chao Cai, Jia Li, Chengxiu Yan, Shuai Zhang, Jiejie Hao and Guangli Yu declare that they have no competing interests; Zhiyun Wu also provides a Competing Interests Statement declaring that she has no competing interests. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers .doc https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235515.r002
17 Jun 2020 Decision Letter - N. Rajendra Prasad, Editor Photoprotective effect of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced damage in HaCaT cells PONE-D-20-05967R1 Dear Dr. Hao, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, N. Rajendra Prasad, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235515.r003
Formally Accepted
8 Jul 2020 Acceptance Letter - N. Rajendra Prasad, Editor PONE-D-20-05967R1 Photoprotective effect of Astragalus membranaceus polysaccharide on UVA-induced damage in HaCaT cells Dear Dr. Hao: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. N. Rajendra Prasad Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0235515.r004

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