Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 15, 2021
Decision Letter - Esmaeil Ebrahimie, Editor

PONE-D-21-22417

Correlation analysis of m6A-modified regulators with immune microenvironment infiltrating cells in lung adenocarcinoma

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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.

Methods needs clarification. Providing step by step details of methods is required. Data needs to be provided.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 04 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:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Esmaeil Ebrahimie, Ph.D.

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 

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: 

"No" 

At this time, please address the following queries:

a) Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution. 

b) State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

c) If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

d) If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Thank you for stating the following in your Competing Interests section:  

"No"

Please complete your Competing Interests on the online submission form to state any Competing Interests. If you have no competing interests, please state "The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.", as detailed online in our guide for authors at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submit-now 

 This information should be included in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

4. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

The manuscript I based on the data gathered from TCGA database and GEO databased. However, little information is provided in the Methods regarding how the data is searched, and downloaded.

Also, the methods and packages need detailed explanations and clarifications.

Major comments

Major comment 1.

There is a necessity that the authors provide a detailed step by step visualized guidelines or video recording determines:

1-1-How the data is searched (search key words) in TCGA and GEO

1-2-How the data is downloaded

The mentioned guideline can be uploaded as Supplementary file.

Major comment 2.

Detailed references of R packages used for GSVA analysis and ssGSEA analysis as well as

differential expression using R limma package need to be provided.

R codes needs to be attached.

I do suggest to provide step by step visualized guidelines or video recording

Major comment 3.

All downloaded raw data need to be shared.

Major comment 4.

A detailed step by step visualized guidelines or video recording of performing Survival analysis and Survival curves needs to be provided.

Major comment 5.

Data of two immunotherapy cohorts needs to be provided, including raw data as well as cohort statistics.

Minor comments

Minor comment 1.

Quality of figures need to be improved.

Minor comment 2.

A flowchart describing all steps of analysis needs to be provided.

Examples can be provided here:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.01550/full

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45661-7

Minor comment 3.

English of manuscript needs to be improved. There are typs in manuscript. I suggest using English Editing service.

Please note that the work is a bioinformatic and statistics study. I am not able to send the work to review until the Methos is documented, clarified, and become reproducible.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

[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

1.There is a necessity that the authors provide a detailed step by step visualized guidelines or video recording determines:

1-1-How the data is searched (search key words) in TCGA and GEO

1-2-How the data is downloaded

The mentioned guideline can be uploaded as Supplementary file.

ANSWER:The description of the data collection is supplemented in the Methods and Materials section. Further, visual graphics were made for representation and uploaded as an Supplementary file(Figure-S1).

2.Detailed references of R packages used for GSVA analysis and ssGSEA analysis as well as differential expression using R limma package need to be provided.

R codes needs to be attached.

I do suggest to provide step by step visualized guidelines or video recording

ANSWER:Detailed references for GSVA analysis and ssGSEA analysis and R packages for differential expression using the limma package have been described in the Methods and Materials section and are accompanied by the R code.

3.All downloaded raw data need to be shared.

ANSWER:All materials have been attached and uploaded as follows:

1. TCGA-LUAD (annotated document)

2.GEO dataset (platform files and matrix files)

3.TCIA dataset (TCIA-ClinicalData)

4. ssGSEA subsidiary files (immune.gmt)

5. GSVA files (c5.go.v7.4.symbols)

4.A detailed step by step visualized guidelines or video recording of performing Survival analysis and Survival curves needs to be provided.

ANSWER:Details of the survival analysis and survival curve are described in detail in the methods and materials section.

5.Data of two immunotherapy cohorts needs to be provided, including raw data as well as cohort statistics.

ANSWER:Raw data has been uploaded via attachments as well as statistical data as Supplementary file.

6.Quality of figures need to be improved.

ANSWER:Figure has been appropriately modified.

7.A flowchart describing all steps of analysis needs to be provided.

ANSWER:We have added the flow chart and uploaded it as an Supplementary file(Figure-S2).

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Afsheen Raza, Editor

PONE-D-21-22417R1Correlation analysis of m6A-modified regulators with immune microenvironment infiltrating cells in lung adenocarcinomaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Huang,

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.

The manuscript has been evaluated by the reveiwers and requires some minor revisions including typos and table formatting. Kindly pay attention to these comments and resubmit the manuscript with all requested changes. 

Please submit your revised manuscript by 30th October 2021 . 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:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled '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: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Afsheen Raza, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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

**********

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: No

**********

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The authors had made many typos and misused punctuations in the manuscript. The corresponding content of the tables and other supplementary informations should be marked in the main text.

**********

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

[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 2

Dear Editor

Many thanks for the suggestions on the manuscript that can improve the quality of the manuscript. In response to the returned suggestions, the following corrections were made, some of which are marked in red in the manuscript, with the following descriptions:

1.The manuscript has been evaluated by the reveiwers and requires some minor revisions including typos and table formatting. Kindly pay attention to these comments and resubmit the manuscript with all requested changes. 

Re: Correction of the manuscript for punctuation and grammar. The table format was corrected according to the journal's requirements and some adjustments were made to make the manuscript more logical.

If there are still any questions, feel free to contact us and your comments are welcome!

Sincerethanks

TianPeng Huang

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx
Decision Letter - Afsheen Raza, Editor

Correlation A nalysis of m 6 A-modified R egulators with I mmune M icroenvironment I nfiltrating C ells in L ung A denocarcinoma

PONE-D-21-22417R2

Dear Dr. Huang,

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,

Afsheen Raza, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Afsheen Raza, Editor

PONE-D-21-22417R2

Correlation Analysis of m6A-modified Regulators with Immune Microenvironment Infiltrating Cells in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Dear Dr. Huang:

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. Afsheen Raza

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .