PONE-D-21-10682

Isolation and characterization of Streptomyces bacteriophages and Streptomyces strains encoding biosynthetic arsenals

PLOS ONE

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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The reviewers recommend reconsideration of your paper following minor revision. Also, kindly check English, grammar and sentence structure throughout the manuscript before submission of the revised version of the paper to PLOS One.

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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?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: In the paper entitled “Isolation and characterization of Streptomyces bacteriophages and Streptomyces

strains encoding biosynthetic arsenals”, Pogliano and co-workers describe the isolation of 8 novel strains of Streptomyces, identification of strains that likely produce antibiotics, and proposals of their mechanisms of action using bacterial cytological profiling. Addtionally, 4 novel actinobacteriaphage were characterized

Major concerns:

It is generally quite challenging to determine the species of Streptomyces based solely on the 16s rRNA sequencing. Typically, it is better practice to sequence several housekeeping genes (see Antonie van Leeuwenhoek volume 110, pages563–583 (2017) for more details). It would be useful to do this to determine the likely species that these new Streptomyces are.

Why was neighbor joining chosen for the phylogenetic tree? It seems that a maximum likelihood tree might make more sense? This is not a huge dataset so a maximum likelihood tree should be doable.

Minor concerns:

Figures 7 is a little blurry/difficult to read.

The transition from talking about antibiotics to bacteriophage is a little sudden. Almost feels like they could be 2 different papers.

Reviewer #2: Montaño et al. manuscript entitled "Isolation and characterization of Streptomyces bacteriophages and Streptomyces strains encoding biosynthetic arsenals", Comments given below:

1. Authors should include the future prospectus or outlooks in the manuscript. In reference to which microbes have better performance.

2. In the manuscript microbes name (as Bionomial nomenclature) should be in italics. Please check Table 1 and in the manuscript.

3. In the manuscript lots of tables and figures with same data. So, authors should keep some tables/figs in supplementary.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Ram Prasad

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Isolation and characterization of Streptomyces bacteriophages and Streptomyces strains encoding biosynthetic arsenals

PONE-D-21-10682R1

Dear Dr. Pogliano,

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.

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Kind regards,

Vijai Kumar Gupta, PhD in Microbiology

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Authors have answered the questions raised by the reviewers and have modified the manuscript as suggested. The manuscript, in its present form, can be accepted for publication.

Reviewers' comments: