Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionSeptember 3, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-27668 Bioinformatics-based prediction of conformational epitopes for human parechovirus PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Dong, 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. ============================== Both reviewers noticed that the main method used for the study was adapted from the original publication but that the modifications were not completely described. This is not in line with the PLOS publication criteria and must be addressed. The manuscript should also be adapted to be more clear wherever possible and include all relevant introduction, method description and discussion as indicated by the reviewers. The issues to address are listed below ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 08 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're 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. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Ivan Sabol Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and [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: Partly Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: N/A Reviewer #2: N/A ********** 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 ********** 4. 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 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 manuscript entitled ‘Bioinformatics-based prediction of conformational epitopes for Human Parechovirus’ Rong et al used previously published bioinformatics tools (Borley et al, 2013) with some modifications to predict conformational epitopes on the surface of parechovirus capsids. This study might be of interest for therapeutic antibody development mainly to treat neonatal parechovirus infections. The manuscript in its current form, however, is not suitable for publication. Major points: The introduction is not comprehensively written. The research question and the related topic is not properly introduced and it is very hard for the reader to grasp what has been done and why. The method and why it was chosen is not clear. In addition, it is not clear why authors chose parechoviruses for their analysis. They mention that it is important for vaccine design and monitoring of antigenic evolution like in case with influenza. Parechoviruses are not comparable with influenza virus because (as authors mentioned) seroprevalence increases with age and 6 year and older children have 100% protection for HPeV1 and 85% for HPeV3. Parechoviruses are the main threat for neonates for whom vaccines is not an option. Authors should reconsider the impact of their study. It is very confusing why authors add published results obtained with CVA10. The accuracy of conformational epitope prediction largely depends on the accuracy of 3D structures of viruses of interest. It is not mentioned in the text how accurate structures for HPeV1 and HPeV3 are, which were basis for current study. Authors also mention that part of the polypeptide missing from the structures was modelled which hampers the accuracy of the structure. In addition, there are very few experimentally confirmed epitopes to validate the results. Authors may argue that the method has been published, but there were some modifications introduced. Methods are not sufficiently described. The result section sounds very repetitive. Additionally, for comparison authors randomly chose only few isolates from 6 parechovirus types. It is of importance to evaluate the similarity of predicted epitopes in as large number of isolates as possible from all parechovirus types to make some conclusions. Part of Figure 1 and Suppl Figures 1-3 show only trivial information published elsewhere in a very similar way. Should be excluded. Authors should make less repetitive figures (eg Suppl Fig 1 and 2) clearly showing the point of interest. Specific points: Page 3 lines 55-57: it is not clear why authors choose CVA10 for comparison, as this is relevant to all picornaviruses. Page 3 line 59: term ‘viral maturation’ might be misleading in this context. Should be rephrased. Page 4 line 65: It is very obscure what is ‘structural protein’? It should be ‘part of polyprotein encoding for structural proteins’. Page 4 line 69: it is not clear how many strains are included in the comparison. 70-71: it is true for all picornaviruses thus it is misleading to mention only enteroviruses. Page 4 lines 73-78: Authors describe data published by others (Shakeel et al 2016, Domanska et al, 2019, and Kalynych et al, 2015), thus the Fig 1A-F has no additional value. Page 5 line 93: This is definition for conformational epitopes. It is unclear what authors mean by ‘B-cell conformational epitopes’. Needs further explanation. Table 1. It is not clear why authors add already published results into the Table 1 alongside with unpublished data. The better place for published data is discussion. Reviewer #2: In this paper, Rong et al presented analysis of conformational epitopes of HPeV1 and HPeV3 using a modified protocol based on the work of Borley et al. They identified three potential sites of conformational epitopes, of which two can be corroborated with previous work. All three sites have also been identified in CVA10 in the author’s previous work. Overall, the work is well presented and of interest within the picornavirus community. I have few comments on the manuscripts: 1. Please expand more how you modified the method described in Borley et al. 2. Can the authors re-do the analysis of FMDV which formed the basis of the work of Borley et al to see whether their modification in the protocol affected the analysis of FMDV as well. And also include this analysis on FMDV as the second comparison besides the one they do with CVA10. 3. Can the authors comment on whether the receptor-binding sites overlap with the conformational epitopes for other picornaviruses for which receptors as well as conformational epitopes are known? They can include a comment on HPeV1 that even though the conformational epitope of HPeV1 do not overlap with the integrin-binding site, but the integrin is only an attachment receptor and there may be, yet another unidentified receptor involved for destablizing the capsid for genome release which may be using the same site as the conformational epitopes identified in this study. 4. Can the authors include a Q-score from PDBeFold or some other structural similarity measure such as rmsd between the HPeV1 and HPeV3 capsid structures. This would provide an idea about overall structural similarity between these viruses. 5. In line 35, please add monoclonal antibody in front of AM28. 6. In line 151, please remove the word “crystal” as there is no crystal structure of HPeV3 VP1. 7. In line 280, please replace * with a black dot because that’s what you in the corresponding figure 3. 8. In line 350, please clarify what the authors meant by “Dissimilarly”. ********** 6. 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 [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
| Revision 1 |
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Bioinformatics-based prediction of conformational epitopes for human parechovirus PONE-D-20-27668R1 Dear Dr. Dong, 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. Reviewer 1 has made some small suggestions that could further improve the manuscript if possible. These changes will not go through another round of peer review. 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, Ivan Sabol 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ********** 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: I Don't Know Reviewer #2: N/A ********** 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: The revised manuscript by Rong et al entitled ‘Bioinformatics-based prediction of conformational epitopes for Human Parechovirus’ has greatly improved compared to previous version. Authors described modification of the algorithm originally used by Borley et al. in more detail. Authors also verified and compared new modification using previously published data by Borley et al. The repetitive content has been removed; abstract and introduction have been revised, and discussion modified accordingly. Could authors still include the comprehensive list of HPeV types in the sequence conservation analysis? Currently authors provide data for only HPeV1-6 types, whereas there are 19 types recognized (S2 Table). P 3 line 60, please use ‘Like other picornaviruses’ instead of ‘Like most picornaviruses’. Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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 |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-20-27668R1 Bioinformatics-based prediction of conformational epitopes for Human Parechovirus Dear Dr. Dong: 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. Ivan Sabol Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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