PONE-D-23-28722Distribution of antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotic residues in drinking water production facilities: links to bacterial communityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tsholo,

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José António Baptista Machado Soares, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa Grant No. C2019-2020-00224 (Bursary for Karabo Tsholo), The Water Research Commission (WRC) of South Africa: (Contract - 2019/2020-00224). The views expressed are those of the authors and not of the funding agencies.

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear authors,

I am pleased to inform you that both reviewers only requested minor revisions for future publication endorsement. Please carefully answer both reviewers' concerns and rectify the manuscript following their comments.

Thank you and best regards,

António Machado

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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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

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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: The Author has tried o identify the correlation between ARGs detected and the antibiotic residues in the drinking water facilities. However, it is not clear why only few antibiotic resistance genes were selected.

Were bacterial communities identified in the water common inhabitants of drinking water?

It looks like antibiotic residues were selected based on the ARGs identified in the water or vice versa. What is the relevance of this?

Reviewer #2: I consider authors have carried out a valid study. Experiments and analysis are appropiated for answering the research question. Since I have several comments about most of the paper sections (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion), a review report have been uploaded as a PDF document.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewer Report-ARGs & Antibiotic Residues.pdf

Distribution of antibiotic resistance genes and antibiotic residues in drinking water production facilities: links to bacterial community

PONE-D-23-28722R1

Dear authors,

I am pleased to inform you that both reviewers enjoyed the manuscript very much and endorsed the revised manuscript for publication.

Thank you for choosing Plos ONE journal to publish your study.

Best regards,

António Machado

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)

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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: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: The manuscript can now be accepted for publication, since the authors have meticulously followed all the suggestion from the reviewers

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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