PONE-D-21-30580

Microbial induced calcite precipitation can consolidate martian and lunar regolith simulants

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kumar,

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Il Won Kim

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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“RD acknowledges funding from Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, GOI for their grant under BioCare scheme (BT/PR31844/BIC/101/1206/2019). Authors acknowledge thank Indian Space Research Organisation for providing the lunar soil simulant. AK acknowledges partial support from [Grant number- ISTC0415]. We thank Dr. Amrit Ambirajan, Research Professor, IISc and former Scientist, ISRO for stimulating discussions and for suggesting the name ‘space bricks’.”

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Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“RD

BT/PR31844/BIC/101/1206/2019

Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, GOI

https://dbtindia.gov.in/

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

AK

ISTC0415

Indian Space Research Organisation

https://www.isro.gov.in/

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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: 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

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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: This is an interesting idea and could lead to further developments. It is well written and clearly presented. I do wonder why the authors used a Gram positive bacterium, since a number of calcifying Gram negative bacteria have been investigated and have the ability to produce their own "gums" (extracellular polymeric substances, EPS), which could avoid the need to add yet another ingredient to the growth medium. I should like the authors to include some comparisons with consolidated bricks produced by the other (non microbial) methods that they mention. Are there advantages to this method and, if so, what are they?

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors,

I read with interest your paper about the microbial consolidation of regolith. I must say I expected some more-in-depth evaluations about the effect of carbonate precipitation on the mechanical properties of your material (maybe a grain size vs mechanical quality effect, or something related to the percentage of one calcium carbonate polymorph instead of the others, or the total amount of calcium carbonate precipitated comparing different conditions and so on). In fact, I didn't find what I expected. The paper does not enter into the details of the mechanisms triggered by the different preparative routes but simply compares some samples without trying an explication, a model, a generalization to forecast what will happen by changing one among the variables.

I put some comments directly into the text. Please check typos.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-30580_reviewer_rev.pdf

Microbial induced calcite precipitation can consolidate martian and lunar regolith simulants

PONE-D-21-30580R1

Dear Dr. Kumar,

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,

Il Won Kim

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Please check the reviewer’s comment on XRD patterns (vs ‘spectrum’) and amend your text during proofreading.

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 #2: 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 #2: Yes

**********

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

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 #2: Yes

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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 #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 #2: Dear Authors,

thank you for your in-depth responses and all the extra material you supplied to support your answers. I must say this is the first time I had the chance of reading such detailed answers with so many additional data that make it clear the paper belongs to a much wider program. For this reason thank you so much.

I recommend to check the paper proofs carefully and change the world "spectrum" that appears in many points of your paper when describing XRPD patterns with "pattern" or "diffraction data" or similar because XRPD is not a spectroscopic technique, but I do not want ask "minor revisions" since you did a lot of work already and I consider the paper deserves to be published on Plos.

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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 #2: No