PONE-D-24-53142Epidemiological investigation and genetic evolution analysis of duck circovirus in China, 2022PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

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: No

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: This article provided some valuable information for understanding the evolution of DuCV, but a few modifications are necessary to improve the manuscript.

1. Authors should provide the approval number for animal experiments.

2. Authors should provide detailed information of the clinical samples, such as the collected time and place, duck breeds, number of samples tested, number of positive samples, etc. The detailed information should be provided in a table, and Fig 1 should be deleted.

3. English editing and academic writing should be improved.

4. “Shandong Province had the highest number (293) of positive samples.” If it is because of the large number of samples collected in Shandong, this conclusion makes no sense.

Reviewer #2: In this study, Li et al. investigated the epidemiology, genetic diversity, and evolutionary dynamics of Duck Circovirus (DuCV) in China. Through extensive sampling and sequencing, they identified two main circulating genotypes, DuCV-1b and DuCV-2c, and explored mixed infections with other pathogens. Additionally, the authors performed genetic recombination analyses to trace the possible origins of DuCV strains. Overall, this manuscript provides significant insights into the molecular epidemiology of DuCV.

Major points:

1. The authors detected co-infection with DuCV in the samples. Could you please provide a detailed description of how the co-infection was detected and include the primer sequences used?

2. The authors downloaded an unspecified number of full-genome sequences of DuCV from the NCBI database to construct the genetic evolutionary tree. However, detailed information, such as the isolation date, location, species, and GenBank IDs, is not provided. What criteria were used to select these full-genome sequences for analysis?

3. The quality of the figures is low. The authors should upload the figures in higher resolution. The phylogenetic trees, in particular, are difficult to read.

4. Line 347: Would constructing a Maximum Likelihood (ML) tree be more accurate?

5. Line 195: What are the "reference strains"? Is there any detailed information provided about them?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Epidemiological investigation and analysis of the genetic evolution of duck circovirus in China, 2022

PONE-D-24-53142R1

Dear Dr. Chunguo Liu,

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,

Li Xing

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: (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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: In this study, the authors investigated the epidemiology, genetic diversity, and evolutionary dynamics of Duck Circovirus (DuCV) in China. Through extensive sampling and sequencing, they identified two main circulating genotypes, DuCV-1b and DuCV-2c, and explored mixed infections with other pathogens. Additionally, the authors performed genetic recombination analyses to trace the possible origins of DuCV strains. Overall, this manuscript provides significant insights into the molecular epidemiology of DuCV. The revised MS is OK.

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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

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