PONE-D-22-04674MafB, WDR77, and ß-catenin interact with each other and have similar genome association profilesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Struhl,

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[This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to KS (CA 107486) and ZW (HG009446).]

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 [HHS | National Institutes of Health (NIH):Lizhi He,Kevin Struhl CA107486; HHS | National Institutes of Health (NIH):Mingshi Gao,Henry Pratt,Zhiping Weng HG009446]

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

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Reviewer #1: The manuscript by He et al. describes the physical and genomic association between MafB, WDR77 and β-catenin, three proteins belonging to different families that have been previously reported to be involved in cellular transformation processes. This is a descriptive work by an excellent team with a solid expertise in genomic studies. It is not clear to me whether this a resubmission to Plos One journal or a transfer from another journal, as a Rebuttal letter has been attached by the Authors. Anyway, I have read the answers to Referees’ comments and I agree with the Authors that these results could be useful for the research activity of other scientists studying the role of MafB, WDR77 and β-catenin proteins. In the absence of functional data that would allow to submit the manuscript to higher impact journals, Plos One is the appropriate journal.

1. I respect the frankness of the Authors that stated that the rationale of the work rose from unrelated observations on β-catenin interactors and MafB. Despite this, I believe that the first paragraph of the Results section does not give the reader a clear idea about the research. The Authors reported the reference to their previous works on YAP/TAZ and S100A8/A9, but, as they stated in their Rebuttal, these works are not linked to the present one. I believe that the first paragraph should be differently elaborated to give the reader a better understanding of the work.

In the first and third paragraphs, the Authors refer to mass spectrometry experiment that allows to identify WDR77 as β-catenin interactor. Are these results published or can the Author provide some details?

2. I believe that the results would be of great interest to other scientists if the Authors could identify transcription factor binding sites within MafB, WDR77 and β-catenin ChIP-Seq data. Moreover, it would be useful if the Authors could add GO/KEGG analysis of RNA seq profiles. In particular, which are gene categories of differentially expressed genes overlapping between the three transcriptional profiles from RNAi cells showed in Figure 5A-B?

Minor:

-The MCF10A-ER-SRC cellular model has been previously used and described by the Authors, but I suggest to add at least that tamoxifen treatment is used to induce Src-mediated transformation (second paragraph of the results section:” …in the presence of tamoxifen”) to help readers that did not read previous works.

- Statistical analysis should be added for the histograms showed in Fig. 1D-E.

- Page 7: the Authors described H3K4me3 and H3K27ac as markers of +1 nucleosome position but they show only H3K4me3 Fig.4C; I suggest to remove H3K27ac from the description.

- Please, edit “CRIPSR” in Figure 1A, and “ß-catenin siRN” in Fig. 1D, “noramlized ChIP-seq signal” Fig. 3A.

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Reviewer #1: No

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MafB, WDR77, and ß-catenin interact with each other and have similar genome association profiles

PONE-D-22-04674R1

Dear Dr. Prof. Struhl,

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,

Roberto Mantovani

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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