PONE-D-23-20187Ameliorating the impairment of glucose utilization in a high-fat diet-induced obesity model through the consumption of Tucum-do-Cerrado (Bactris Setosa Mart.)PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Araújo,

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Anand Thirupathi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: N/A

Reviewer #3: Yes

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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

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: 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: Good efforts by the authors.

Q1. Fig.1 is not called out in the results section. Since the body weight of rats are overlapping, a line graph would be more appropriate for better visualization. This should be considered.

Q2. The author should provide the 95% confidence interval for all the p-values. Since the SEM has been used for plotting graphs, there are variations among groups which overlap with other groups, yet significantly different. These data are hidden and opaque to readers.

Q3. Labelling of individual graphs of each figure and appropriate callouts should be done to enhance the readers' attention.

Q4. Fig. 4,6, and 7. What does the word "mRNAr" indicates?

Q5. Authors did not provide the primers for TNFa and IL1b.

Q6. Fig2 A- GST activity significance value of HF/TUC is suspicious. This puts the authors conclusion "This response may be related to the improvement in the total antioxidant capacity of rats" in question. Please clarify the statistics

Suggestion to author to refer for graphs https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/time-series.html

Reviewer #2: High-fat diet fed rats were used in the manuscript, and the glucose utilization was impaired, which could be ameliorated with consumption of Tucum-do-Cerrado, investigation of the underlying mechanisms revealed the increased liver and muscle glucose uptake and oxidation. However, there are some issues to be done to improve the manuscript.

1. The powder of Tucum-do-Cerrado extraction was used for the diet supplements, and could ameliorate the glucose metabolism disorders induced by high-fat diet in the manuscript, and it can also protect tissues against iron-induced oxidative stress in the published work. It is wondering what main component of Tucum-do-Cerrado is protective, which could be discussed or referenced.

2. Although the freezing-dried Tucum-do-Cerrado extraction could induce the changes of muscle glycogen, it has no effects on fasting plasma glucose, body weight and insulin level, which is contrary to the reports in 2020 (doi: 10.1039/D0FO01912G.), is it due to the different dosage? What is the relative dose of the extraction for human beings?

3. In the section of Results, there was no description of Figure 1, which should be inserted in corresponding position.

4. In table 2 and 3, there are labels of a, b or c in graphs, which means the p value? It is recommended to add the information in figure legends respectively.

5. In table 3, check the position of ±, if there is no error for its position, what it represents should be listed in figure legends. Moreover, there are significant changes according to p value < 0.05 such as 0.021 or 0.018, but the description in the main text is no alteration, which should be checked and corrected.

6. In figure 4a, 6a and 7b, what does “r” in “mRNAr” mean? The spelling of B-actin should be β-actin.

7. In the top left corner of the column in figures, there are illustrations of diet, Tucum, diet x Tucum with data, which should also be explained in figure legends.

8. Confirm it is glucosidade or glucosidase in the subtitle of 2.8.1?

9. For statistics, two-way ANOVA is preferable to obtain p value.

Reviewer #3: Dear writers, the article is very well written, it was possible to make a practical and very precise reading, coherently relating the results and discussing them with precision. Like all scientific work, we know that some errors end up passing through and we don't realize it, so I'll make some remarks about the article here.

I noticed a few times in the articles that some acronyms or symbols are described differently. Ex: 98°C - 4oC. It would be of great interest to review the acronyms and symbols throughout the article in order to create a single standard for the presentation of the work.

In addition, some spacing after punctuations and/or symbols are different in some moments of the article (Ex: Fig. 6A - Fig. 5 A). Please, review this too.

in topic 2.2 treatment; the number of animals is spelled out, in which case it is correct to use "24".

The title of item 2.8.1 is misspelled, "Intestinal α-glucosity" please correct for α-glucosidase.

Finally, something that caught my attention was the significant differences (Ex: p<0.0001), it is not common to use the point to separate the integer part from the decimal part, this is only common in English-speaking countries. Therefore, the correct thing is to review all the significant differences represented in the article and replace the points with commas.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Ameliorating the impairment of glucose utilization in a high-fat diet-induced obesity model through the consumption of Tucum-do-Cerrado (Bactris Setosa Mart.)

PONE-D-23-20187R1

Dear Dr. Araújo,

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,

Anand Thirupathi

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

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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 #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: All the previous questions were addressed.

I appreciate the great efforts taken to visualize the data in graphs.

The legends of graph in individual figures (i.e., a, b, c, etc., of figures) are not consistent throughout the manuscript.

Do arrange the legends.

Reviewer #2: The revised manuscript has corrected the errors in the tables and figures and results descriptions, and the statistics methods have been used as required. Moreover, the main components of Tucum-do-Cerrado that may exert the protective effect have also been discussed at the end of the revised manuscript. Therefore, the present form of manuscript has been been improved a lot, which could be considered for acception.

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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 #1: Yes: Kannathasan Thetchinamoorthy

Reviewer #2: No

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