PONE-D-24-35651Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservativesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hesari,

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.

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The manuscript entitled “Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives” is original and good concept of sustainable delivery of thyme oil as an antimicrobial agents for applications in food and pharma sector.

The manuscript is novel and showed scientific sound. Therefore, the manuscript must be revised according to the comments of reviewers. The manuscript shall be reconsider after corrections. 

Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS ONE’s publication criteria and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

For Lab, Study and Registered Report Protocols: These article types are not expected to include results but may include pilot data. 

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 31 2024 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,

Nishant Kumar, 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

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2. We suggest you thoroughly copyedit your manuscript for language usage, spelling, and grammar. If you do not know anyone who can help you do this, you may wish to consider employing a professional scientific editing service.

The American Journal Experts (AJE) (https://www.aje.com/) is one such service that has extensive experience helping authors meet PLOS guidelines and can provide language editing, translation, manuscript formatting, and figure formatting to ensure your manuscript meets our submission guidelines. Please note that having the manuscript copyedited by AJE or any other editing services does not guarantee selection for peer review or acceptance for publication.

Upon resubmission, please provide the following:

The name of the colleague or the details of the professional service that edited your manuscript

A copy of your manuscript showing your changes by either highlighting them or using track changes (uploaded as a *supporting information* file)

A clean copy of the edited manuscript (uploaded as the new *manuscript* file).

3. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files.] Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition). For example, authors should submit the following data: - The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported; - The values used to build graphs; - The points extracted from images for analysis. Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study. If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

The manuscript entitled “Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives” is original and good concept of sustainable delivery of thyme oil as an antimicrobial agents for applications in food and pharma sector.

The manuscript required major improvement. My comments and suggestions are appended below.

Abstract

Objective and conclusion must be clear

Introduction

Introduction must be improving with focusing on the nanoparticles and thyme oils

Some previous studies finding should be highlights in the introduction section

Results and discussion

The results must be elobrate in more depth and discussion section must be improve

Conclusion

Conclusion section must be rewrite with highlights the findings of the study

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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: Yes

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: 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: The authors have investigated the antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded solid lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives. The study has highlighted important parameters which support the findings. The data is well presented by the authors. Some minor revisions are recommended for further improvements in the manuscript:

1. In section 2.1, mention the full form of abbreviation PVA.

2. In section 2.3.1, 2.3.2, 2.3.4 insert the references for the methodology followed.

3. Mention the abbreviations of samples in the legend of table 1, table 2

4. In the section 4, the year of publication should be mentioned with the references ‘Reis Mockdeci et al.’, Nemattalab et al., Al Hafi et al etc.

5. The section 4 (discussion) could be improved by stating systematic explanation of the outcomes of each result along with the comparison with similar studies.

6. A single format of writing (p < 0.05) should be used uniformly throughout the manuscript. In section 4, its mentioned as (Pvalue < 0.05) which differs from rest of the manuscript.

7. The conclusion section could be written in a more scientific manner by explaining the pros of the outcomes and future scope of the study.

8. Maintain same font style and font size as recommended in the author guidelines. The font style and font size are different for references than rest of the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript titled as Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives submitted to PLOS ONE with manuscript number PONE-D-24-35651 for possible publication is not suitable for the publication as such due to following points. It must be REJECTED.

• The antibacterial results are limited to in vitro experiments. The study could be strengthened by including in vivo evaluations to confirm its potential as a food preservative.

• While the study compares TO-SLN and TO-CH, it doesn't explore why chitosan significantly enhances antibacterial effects compared to lipid-based systems. A deeper analysis of the underlying mechanisms would be valuable.

• Long-term stability of the nanoparticle systems (especially for food applications) is not addressed, which is essential for practical implementation in the food industry.

• The diagrams need to be improved.

• Some sentences are lengthy and complex, which may obscure the key points so simplifying those sentences would improve clarity.

• Discussion section is comprehensive and the comparison with existing literature is good but it can be improved by adding more information on how TO-CH nanoparticles achieve such high antibacterial activity and how and why is it more effective than others.

• Ensure the following: Avoid repetition of words, The terms in vitro, in vivo, names of the biological organisms should be italic.

• Conclusion is very concise and summarizes only the findings of this study so emphasizing on the practical application of TO-CH as a natural food preservative and addressing the limitations of this study could strengthen the conclusion and make it more impactful.

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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: No

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[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.

PONE-D-24-35651R1Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservativesPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hesari,

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 submit your revised manuscript by Dec 20 2024 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,

Nishant Kumar, 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.

Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

Your manuscript entitled "Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives

" could be accepting after some minor corrections.

Reviewer comments:

The revised manuscript "Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives with manuscript No. PONE-D-24-35651R1 has been reviewed and the authors are appreciated for the revision. However, some minor comments include the

1. It will be better if the equations used in the manuscript are numbered.

2. FTIR data can be plotted in one frame instead of using 3 frames...This will improve the quality of figure.

3. Figure 6 can also be improved by reducing to one frame instead of 3, if possible and data allows.

[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 #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

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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: The revised manuscript "Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives with manuscript No. PONE-D-24-35651R1 has been reviewed and the authors are appreciated for the revision. However, some minor comments include the

1. It will be better if the equations used in the manuscript are numbered.

2. FTIR data can be plotted in one frame instead of using 3 frames...This will improve the quality of figure.

3. Figure 6 can also be improved by reducing to one frame instead of 3, if possible and data allows.

**********

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

**********

[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.

Antibacterial effects of thyme oil loaded Solid Lipid and chitosan nano-carriers against Salmonella Typhimurium and Escherichia coli as food preservatives

PONE-D-24-35651R2

Dear Dr. Hesari,

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 will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, 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,

Nishant Kumar, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: