Peer Review History

Original SubmissionFebruary 3, 2023
Decision Letter - Asli Suner Karakulah, Editor

PONE-D-23-03131Dataset of single nucleotide polymorphisms of immune-associated genes in patients with SARS-CoV2 infectionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Katsaouni,

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. Your manuscript has been reviewed and requires modifications prior to making a decision. The comments of the reviewers are included at the bottom of this letter. Reviewers indicated that methods and results sections should be improved. We would be glad to consider a substantial revision of your work, where the reviewers' comments will be carefully addressed one by one.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 22 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.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Asli Suner Karakulah, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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"This work was supported by the Goethe-Corona-Funds of the Goethe University Frankfurt to D.S.K. We acknowledge funding from the Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung as part of the center for data science and AI and the DFG Cluster of Excellence Cardio Pulmonary Institute (CPI) [EXC 2026]. We also acknowledge funding from the consortia ACLF-I (Acute Liver Failure - Initiative) and ENABLE (Unraveling mechanisms driving cellular homeostasis, inflammation and infection to enable new approaches in translational medicine) (Hessian Ministry of the Arts and Sciences)."

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4. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: 

"This work was supported by the Goethe-Corona-Funds of the Goethe University Frankfurt to D.S.K. We acknowledge funding from the Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung as part of the center for data science and AI and the DFG Cluster of Excellence Cardio Pulmonary Institute (CPI) [EXC 2026]. We also acknowledge funding from the consortia ACLF-I (Acute Liver Failure - Initiative) and ENABLE (Unraveling mechanisms driving cellular homeostasis, inflammation and infection to enable new approaches in translational medicine) (Hessian Ministry of the Arts and Sciences)."

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5. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: 

"This work was supported by the Goethe-Corona-Funds of the Goethe University Frankfurt to

D.S.K. We acknowledge funding from the Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung as part of the

center for data science and AI and the DFG Cluster of Excellence Cardio Pulmonary Institute

(CPI) [EXC 2026]. We also acknowledge funding from the consortia ACLF-I (Acute Liver Failure

- Initiative) and ENABLE (Unraveling mechanisms driving cellular homeostasis, inflammation

and infection to enable new approaches in translational medicine) (Hessian Ministry of the

Arts and Sciences)."

We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. 

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: 

"This work was supported by the Goethe-Corona-Funds of the Goethe University Frankfurt to D.S.K. We acknowledge funding from the Alfons und Gertrud Kassel-Stiftung as part of the center for data science and AI and the DFG Cluster of Excellence Cardio Pulmonary Institute (CPI) [EXC 2026]. We also acknowledge funding from the consortia ACLF-I (Acute Liver Failure - Initiative) and ENABLE (Unraveling mechanisms driving cellular homeostasis, inflammation and infection to enable new approaches in translational medicine) (Hessian Ministry of the Arts and Sciences)."

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[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

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: No

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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: In this paper, the authors are proposed “Dataset of single nucleotide polymorphisms of immune-associated genes in patients with SARS-CoV2 infection”

The strengths of the paper are that it is well structured, the description of the related work is well done and that results are extensively compared to results of the similar research.

Minor revisions:

1. Authors should draw a graphical abstract of the proposed approach

2. Authors should justify the proposed approach.

3. Proofread the entire manuscript.

4. Authors should submit dataset sample in supplementary files, and some supplementary files are not open.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

First of all, I congratulate you for doing this fascinating study.

The article itself is well written, although it needs some corrections, as I mentioned in manuscript using track changes.

Please use the italic format for the name of genes and normal font for the protein’s names.

Success in your further research

Reviewer #3: It is necessary that the authors mention in the methods section, the program with which they analyzed the data of age, sex, blood group and HLA.

Likewise, to enrich the results, it is advisable to mention the clinical characteristics of the patients, mainly those who presented the 4 SNPs, as well as discuss the clinical data to reinforce the importance of the study.

It is necessary to unify universal terminology, such as SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, among others throughout the article.

**********

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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Mohadeseh Haji Abdolvahab

Reviewer #3: Yes: Gustavo J. Vazquez-Zapien

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Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: Covid_Manuscript_Final-v2.docx
Revision 1

We would like to thank the reviewers for reading the manuscript, for the kind response and for their helpful suggestions. In the revised version, changes are highlighted in blue boldface letters.

Reviewer #1:

In this paper, the authors are proposed “Dataset of single nucleotide polymorphisms of immune-associated genes in patients with SARS-CoV2 infection”. The strengths of the paper are that it is well structured, the description of the related work is well done and that results are extensively compared to results of the similar research.

Response: We thank the reviewer for these positive comments.

Minor revisions:

Authors should draw a graphical abstract of the proposed approach

Response: In the original manuscript we had provided a figure on the workflow of our study. However, in response to this reviewer’s suggestion we now also include an updated graphical abstract.

Authors should justify the proposed approach.

Response: We agree with the reviewer and have now added sentences to this effect to the introduction (page 5).

Proofread the entire manuscript.

Response: We agree with the reviewer and apologize for any previous typos. After making the requested changes, the manuscript has now been proofread again.

Authors should submit dataset sample in supplementary files, and some supplementary files are not open.

Response: We apologize for this. We now include the entire dataset in supplementary files and have checked that they can be opened.

Reviewer #2:

Dear authors, First of all, I congratulate you for doing this fascinating study. The article itself is well written, although it needs some corrections, as I mentioned in manuscript using track changes.

Response: We thank the reviewer for these encouraging words. We also thank you for explicitly pointing out errors and misleading sentences in the manuscript. Your work was a great help in the revision of the manuscript. We carefully proofread the final version. We made changes in the text according to your suggestions marked in the manuscript. Please see the list of changes below:

Page 15/16: The following sentence easily can be misunderstood:

"SIGLEC7 and ACE appear to have significant false discovery rates (p-value < 0.05 ) with 2 and 12 considered SNPs, respectively."

We changed the text to:

"Genes SIGLEC7 and ACE appear to have significant false discovery rates (p-value < 0.05). The significance for the gene SIGLEC7 is associated with a group of patients who presented with at least one of two SNPs. The significance for gene ACE is associated with a group of patients who presented with at least one of twelve SNPs."

Page 16: The following sentence easily can be misunderstood:

"The SNP in the SIGLEC7 gene exhibited a mutation from cytosine to guanine, causing a residue change from serine to cysteine at position 190 in the amino acid chain."

We changed the text to:

"The SNP in the SIGLEC7 gene represents a mutation from cytosine to guanine. During transcription to a chain of amino acids, this SNP causes a change from serine to cysteine at position 190."

Please use the italic format for the name of genes and normal font for the protein’s names.

Response: We agree with the reviewer and apologize. All gene names have been italicized in capital letters, while protein names are written in capital letters and are not italicized.

Success in your further research

Thank you!

Reviewer #3:

It is necessary that the authors mention in the methods section, the program with which they analyzed the data of age, sex, blood group and HLA.

Response: We agree with the reviewer and thank him/her for raising this point. On page 10 we have now added the following text:

"Descriptive statistics of age, gender, blood group, and HLA

For the analysis of statistics we wrote Python scripts (Python version 3.7.6) in Jupyter Notebook. We used modules from the scipy package (version 1.4.1) for statistical calculations and applied ML algorithms from the scikit-learn library (version 0.22.1)."

Likewise, to enrich the results, it is advisable to mention the clinical characteristics of the patients, mainly those who presented the 4 SNPs, as well as discuss the clinical data to reinforce the importance of the study.

Response: We agree with the reviewer and thank him/her for this excellent suggestion. We have added details to the results section on page 15/16 and have discussed these data on page 19. We also politely refer the reader to our table with the patients’ metadata.

It is necessary to unify universal terminology, such as SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, among others throughout the article.

Response: We agree with the reviewer. We have unified language with respect to SARS-CoV2 and other terms, as suggested by this reviewer.

Attachments
Attachment
Submitted filename: rebuttal_26_5_23.docx
Decision Letter - Asli Suner Karakulah, Editor

Dataset of single nucleotide polymorphisms of immune-associated genes in patients with SARS-CoV2 infection

PONE-D-23-03131R1

Dear Dr. Katsaouni,

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,

Asli Suner Karakulah, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors addressed the reviewers' concerns and substantially improved the content of MS.

So, based on my own assessment as an academic editor, MS can be accepted in its current form.

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

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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 #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Dear Author.

Previous comments or suggestions have been answered and added to the manuscript. Thank you.

**********

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: Yes: Mohadeseh Haji Abdolvahab

Reviewer #3: Yes: Gustavo J. Vazquez-Zapien

**********

Formally Accepted
Acceptance Letter - Asli Suner Karakulah, Editor

PONE-D-23-03131R1

Dataset of single nucleotide polymorphisms of immune-associated genes in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection

Dear Dr. Katsaouni:

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. Asli Suner Karakulah

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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