Establishment of the body condition score for adult female Xenopus laevis

Leonie Tix; Lisa Ernst; Britta Bungardt; Steven R. Talbot; Gero Hilken; René H. Tolba

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0280000

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 12, 2022
4 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Michael Klymkowsky, Editor PONE-D-22-22653Establishment of the Body Condition Score for adult female Xenopus laevisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tolba, 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. Both reviewers have suggestions for improvements to the manuscript that are reasonably minor. Please address them point by point. Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 18 2022 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: 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, Michael Klymkowsky, 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. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. PLOS defines a study's minimal data set as the underlying data used to reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript and any additional data required to replicate the reported study findings in their entirety. All PLOS journals require that the minimal data set be made fully available. For more information about our data policy, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability. Upon re-submitting your revised manuscript, please upload your study’s minimal underlying data set as either Supporting Information files or to a stable, public repository and include the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers within your revised cover letter. For a list of acceptable repositories, please see http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-recommended-repositories. Any potentially identifying patient information must be fully anonymized. Important: If there are ethical or legal restrictions to sharing your data publicly, please explain these restrictions in detail. Please see our guidelines for more information on what we consider unacceptable restrictions to publicly sharing data: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-unacceptable-data-access-restrictions. Note that it is not acceptable for the authors to be the sole named individuals responsible for ensuring data access. We will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide in your cover letter. 3. 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. 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 manuscript outlines a body condition score for Xenopus frogs along similar lines as those used for other research organisms. There are descriptions of the five score levels ranging from BCS1 (emaciated) to BCS5 ('obese') and a statistical analysis of the relationships of these scores to measurable parameters like length and weight (although these could not be used as single measurements of health). Overall, the body condition scoring should be a useful measure for investigators and staff to assess frog colony health and the effect of repeated oocyte/egg isolation on the animals and could improve objective health assessment. I have only a few suggestions for improvement: 1. Since the authors used animals from three different housing systems, it might be useful to include this information in the counts of weights and BCS and whether there was any effect of housing on BCS (maybe include housing origin in Table 1?). The small numbers of BCS1-2 animals might make any conclusions difficult, but there might be useful information on any differences in weight or BCS3-5 across the housing conditions. 2. Other organisms often have a unified chart showing the BCS scores next to the views describing the condition criteria. It would be good to include such a chart for people to print out and refer to (maybe as a supplemental figure). Maybe also include in the score descriptions terminology found in other charts "underconditioned", "well-conditioned", etc. 3. Minor typos/word usage suggestions: page 9: line 41; check common name use for X. tropicalis (usually "western clawed frog"). line 48; repeat use of term 'undemanding' line 54; ... live 'purely aquatically' page 21: line 295; 'was intended' to be used .... page 22: line 333; 'coelomic cavity' Reviewer #2: The authors provide information regarding body condition score for Xenopus which has not been done previously. The results are well presented but are lacking a few key points that would improve the article for the Xenopus community. 1. The age of the frogs is not presented. The authors do not state if the frogs are all the same age and from the same clutch. How different are the ages and are they all siblings? This information would be helpful. 2. Since Xenopus females are used for oocyte and eggs how does the BCS correlate to the quality of oocytes and eggs? Does BCS impact the quality? Any effect on in vitro fertilization. This information would make BCS score more appropriate for the research community. As it stands the current BCS information would only pertain to those keeping the frogs as pets. 3. What about male frogs? Overall, the paper is sound but the results are not really of great interest to researchers without more information to correlate to egg/oocyte quality. ****** 6. 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: Yes: Douglas W. Houston 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r001
Revision 1
18 Nov 2022 Author Response Response letter PONE-D-22-22653 Dear Michael Klymkowsky, First of all, we would like to thank the Editors and the Reviewers for their valuable input and their pro bono work. We tried to meet the suggestions of the reviewers and hope that this improved the quality of our manuscript, accordingly. In addition, our response to the individual comments of the reviewers are provided in this point-to-point response letter. Referee(s)' Comments to Author: Reviewer #1: 1. Since the authors used animals from three different housing systems, it might be useful to include this information in the counts of weights and BCS and whether there was any effect of housing on BCS (maybe include housing origin in Table 1?). The small numbers of BCS1-2 animals might make any conclusions difficult, but there might be useful information on any differences in weight or BCS3-5 across the housing conditions. We thank you for this valuable feedback and appreciate the comment. For this purpose, we have compared the three different housing conditions and deposited the corresponding data in the supplemental of the manuscript. At this point, we would like to point out again that the husbandry conditions per se, were not the focus of the paper and the influence on the physiology of the animals cannot be addressed here in detail. However, to make the data and graphs transparent and comprehensive to the reader, we have provided further explanations in the supplement. Please see the reference to the supplemental part of the manuscript in lines 240 - 241: “The distribution of assessed BCS within the different housing conditions and their effects on BCS are provided in the supplemental materials (supplemental 2).” Please see here what we added to the supplements concerning your feedback: “In the present study, animals of the following three different housing conditions were evaluated: large circulating, semi-closed circulation system (17 tanks) with water preparation and conditioning to 21°C ± 1°C (circulation large); small circulating, semi-closed circulation system (4 tanks) with water preparation and conditioning to 20°C ± 1°C (circulation small), individual fresh water tanks (240l tank) without water preparation at 12°C ±3°C (cold water flow-through). The housing conditions were analyzed with linear regression, in which the dependent variable (BCS) was modeled as a function of the housing condition. The “cold water flow-through” factor was defined as the intercept level in the regression analysis. Table 4. Result of the linear regression. The linear regression shows that the “tempered circulation system small” significantly impacts the BCS. In comparison to the “cold water flow-through”, the BCS is 0.88 points lower on average (βsmall=-0.88, SE=0.3, p=0.004), while the “circulation large” shows no difference to the cold water system. Since the linear regression showed significant coefficient effects, the corresponding ANOVA was also significant (F(2,59)=4.75, p=0.012). Subsequent post hoc tests revealed more specific between-housing condition differences. The post hoc test shows that the “circulation small” vs. “circulation large” group was not significant (padj=0.08). However, the difference in average BCS was substantial (∆=-0.64), and there was some evidence of a potential effect (p<0.1). While the comparison of “cold water” vs. “circulation large” was not significant (p=0.69) and showed a much lower difference in the average BCS (∆=0.24), the “cold water flow-through” system showed a significant BCS difference (∆=0.88, p=0.01). The post hoc tests were multiplicity-adjusted with the Tukey method. 2. Other organisms often have a unified chart showing the BCS scores next to the views describing the condition criteria. It would be good to include such a chart for people to print out and refer to (maybe as a supplemental figure). Maybe also include in the score descriptions terminology found in other charts "underconditioned", "well-conditioned", etc. We are very grateful for the positive review of our manuscript and addressed your remarks accordingly. Therefore, we attached an overview chart of the BCS to the paper's new version as a supplementary figure, enabling working groups to make further use of it. We have also addressed your suggestion and modified the description about the terminology used in previously published BCSs. Please see the revised manuscript lines: Line 177-178: “…and a BCS 5 is regarded as a very well-conditioned physical state.”, Line 180-181: „…The following assessment criteria are distinguished and defined for the respective BCS levels (Supplemental figure 1).“, Line 187: “Frog underconditioned (-): …” and Line 197: “Frog very well-conditioned (+++): …” Supplemental figure 1: Chart of Body Condition Score for adult female Xenopus laevis 3. Minor typos/word usage suggestions: Thank you for pointing out typos in the manuscript, which we have corrected, accordingly. Please see the revised version of the manuscript in the appropriate places. line 42; common name used for X. tropicalis changed to "western clawed frog". line 50; repeat use of term 'undemanding' changed to 'unpretentious' line 56; ... live 'purely aquatically' line 305; 'was intended' to be used .... line 343/344; 'coelomic cavity' Reviewer #2: 1. The age of the frogs is not presented. The authors do not state if the frogs are all the same age and from the same clutch. How different are the ages and are they all siblings? This information would be helpful. We apologize that this information was not sufficiently addressed in the paper. We have tried to obtain appropriate data and breeding information from the breeder. Unfortunately, they do neither record the individual age, date of spawning nor any relationship of the animals. Therefore, unfortunately, no further information can be given. We have indicated this in line 146/147 of the manuscript. “However, no statement can be made about the age or the degree of relationship of the animals.” However, we will gladly take up this point for investigations within the scope of subsequent projects on this topic in order not to neglect these possible influencing factors. 2. Since Xenopus females are used for oocyte and eggs how does the BCS correlate to the quality of oocytes and eggs? Does BCS impact the quality? Any effect on in vitro fertilization. This information would make BCS score more appropriate for the research community. As it stands the current BCS information would only pertain to those keeping the frogs as pets. Thank you for this interesting and important comment. We are also investigating the significance of the BCS for research. The interpretation of the BCS concerning egg and oocyte quality will be the focus of further investigations and independent tests. We will, therefore, pursue this approach with great interest and publish additional data in due time. Currently, the BCS is seen as a purely descriptive tool for daily animal care and routine examination of individual animals within laboratory animal husbandry. As we are aware of this limitation of the BCS, we addressed this topic in lines 395-398 in the revised manuscript: “However, what effect the age of the animals has on the occurrence of the respective BCS groups and what influence the BCS might have on the quality of oocytes and eggs cannot be addressed at this time. It also remains to be investigated to what extent the BCS for female Xenopus laevis can be transferred to male animals. “ What about male frogs? We are also willing to consider this criticism and examine the transferability of the BCS we presented for female animals to males. However, since these animals are much less frequently kept and used for research on eggs and oocytes, this cannot be answered at this stage. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r002
4 Dec 2022 Decision Letter - Michael Klymkowsky, Editor PONE-D-22-22653R1Establishment of the Body Condition Score for adult female Xenopus laevisPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Tolba, 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. Please address reviewer number 2's comment in the text; I believe the manuscript can then be dealt with without further review. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 18 2023 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: 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, Michael Klymkowsky, Ph.D. 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: (No Response) ******** 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: 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: The response to my comments was either we don't know or that is the basis for a future study. I don't have much more to add. This is unfortunate since now the article is of limited use to researchers who use Xenopus, though this descriptive study may be of use to animal care facilities who care for the animals but have no idea about egg, oocyte quality that is needed in these animals for biomedical research. The authors should include the following statement in the manuscript that they wrote in response to my review: the BCS is seen as a purely descriptive tool for daily animal care and routine examination of individual animals within laboratory animal husbandry. Also the abstract text should be slightly modified. In line 24-25 sentence in abstract the authors state the aim was to establish the BCS in terms of experimental and housing refinement. the word experimental should be removed since there is no correlation made between BCS score and experimental use of Xenopus. ****** 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: Yes: Douglas W Houston 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. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r003
Revision 2
14 Dec 2022 Author Response Dear Sir, Dear Mr. Klymkowsky, First of all, we would like to thank the Editors and the Reviewers again for their valuable input and their pro bono work. We are sorry that our response to Reviewer 2's comments was not sufficient for him and are of course fine with the request to include the suggested passage in the manuscript. Referee(s)' Comments to Author: Reviewer #2: 1. The authors should include the following statement in the manuscript that they wrote in response to my review: “the BCS is seen as a purely descriptive tool for daily animal care and routine examination of individual animals within laboratory animal husbandry.” We regret that our response to your comment was not sufficient in view of the reviewer. We followed your advice and therefore included the statement you suggested in the manuscript. Please, find the text section to be inserted in lines 392 – 394: “Therefore, the BCS is seen as a purely descriptive tool for daily animal care and routine examination of individual animals within laboratory animal husbandry.” 2. Also the abstract text should be slightly modified. In line 24-25 sentence in abstract the authors state the aim was to establish the BCS in terms of experimental and housing refinement. The word experimental should be removed since there is no correlation made between BCS score and experimental use of Xenopus. In addition, we have adjusted the abstract as requested and removed the term “experimental”. However, in order to preserve the laboratory animal science background at this point, we have modified the information accordingly. We hope that this more correct wording is in line with your intentions. The corresponding section of the abstract now reads as follows (lines 24 - 25): “The present study aimed to establish a species-specific BCS for clawed frogs in terms of housing refinement in lab-animal facilities.” Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_R1.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r004
19 Dec 2022 Decision Letter - Michael Klymkowsky, Editor Establishment of the Body Condition Score for adult female Xenopus laevis PONE-D-22-22653R2 Dear Dr. Tolba, 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, Michael Klymkowsky, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r005
Formally Accepted
28 Dec 2022 Acceptance Letter - Michael Klymkowsky, Editor PONE-D-22-22653R2 Establishment of the Body Condition Score for adult female Xenopus laevis Dear Dr. Tolba: 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. Michael Klymkowsky Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280000.r006

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 .