PONE-D-21-26307Prevalence and distribution of Cryptosporidium spp. among diarrheic calves in the Republic of KoreaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kyoung-Seong Choi,

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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: Partly

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: Dear Author,

I can say that I really like the subject of your article.

However, there is some confusion. What is the method by which you specify subtypes? According to which literature did you identify these subtypes?

I have not seen such a method in the literature number 24 that you use on this subject.

You should provide information about this in your article.

Kind regards

Reviewer #2: The current MS presented Cryptospordiosis distribution among calves in ROK. The main issue of this work is the methods in which the authors described it in a briefly way. As PLOS ONE has broad base of readers, so, authors should be mentioned the methods used in something of details. Extraction of DNA from fecal samples needs specific precautions, authors need to mention how they manage these samples, add preservative or not, what about the inhibitors from feces? Also, I can't understand how the authors differentiate between C. ryanae and C. parvum? How did the authors decide that this is C. ryanae and other one is C. bovis then they did sequence and then differentiate between them?

-The introduction needs a paragraph about importance and improvements that were done in the molecular identifications of Cryptosporidium.

- In the discussion the authors need to discusses why the age below 20 days calves are more susceptible to C. parvum?

Reviewer #3: Dear authors,

Thank you for this interesting work.

The manuscript is well written.

Here you are my comments/ remarks for your consideration.

Title

Line2

Should be changed: “Prevalence and distribution pattern of Cryptosporidium spp. among pre-weaned diarrheic calves in the Republic of Korea”

Abstract

L24: Add Cryptosporidium spp. are protozoan parasites that belong to subphylum apicomplexa and cause diarrhea in humans and animals worldwide

L42: Illustrate that family IIa belongs to C. parvum

L45, 46: add the percentage of the rest subtypes that you found .

Key words

L52 Add : spp. to Cryptosporidium,

Materials and Methods

L93-L131 The Materials and Methods should be written in more details.

L110: Why did not you collect an equal number of samples in different age groups ?

Thus you can get more accurate prevalence and actual association between age and Cryptosporidium spp. distribution.

Results and discussion

Results and discussion were written in a good details.

Reviewer #4: Dear Author

This is a generally well written manuscript with minor grammatical errors. Just a few comments or corrections:

1. Correlations are mentioned in the results (line 170) but not described in the statistical analysis.

2. Consider moving the sentence in line 174 to the discussion as it is not a description of the results.

3. Line 216 statement on prevalence of C. ryanae in calves is ambiguous please revise.

4. Line 296 change "sequencing analysis" to "sequence analyses".

5. Line 297 add the word "respectively after the G at the end of the sentence. Line 313 add a recommendation.

Thank you and well done on this work.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-26307_reviewer.pdf

Prevalence and distribution pattern of Cryptosporidium spp. among pre-weaned diarrheic calves in the Republic of Korea

PONE-D-21-26307R1

Dear Dr. Kyoung-Seong Choi,

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.

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Kind regards,

Saeed El-Ashram

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Thank you very much for all of your hard work and dedication. I, the academic editor, welcome your future submissions on behalf of the PLoS ONE editorial members.

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

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #4: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: 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: Accept

It can be published in this form

best wishes

Accept

It can be published in this form

best wishes

Reviewer #2: The authors addressed all comments and corrections that recommended by the reviewer. The manuscript could be accepted in this form

Reviewer #3: Dear authors,

Thank you for performing all the modifications i requested in the manuscript.

Well done and good effort.

With my best wishes

Reviewer #4: Dear Authors

Thanks for the thorough revision of the article and addressing all the reviewer comments. The manuscript is reading well and I recommended it to be accepted for publication.

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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: Yes: Shawky M Aboelhadid

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No