Peer Review History
Original SubmissionFebruary 4, 2020 |
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PONE-D-20-03284 Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events PLOS ONE Dear Mr. Sicorello, 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. This is a very interesting study and an overall well written manuscript. I think the reviewers make some relevant suggestions and comments for a revision, which I encourage you to follow for the most parts. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by May 01 2020 11:59PM. When you are 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. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Hedwig Eisenbarth 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 http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and http://www.journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Aii suggest that you follow both reviewer's suggestions which mainly contain several points of clarification. [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 ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: 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 ********** 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 ********** 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: PONE-D-20-03284 Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events Sicortello et al. tested whether genetic variation in the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) is a differential susceptibility factor for daily events. Participants completed smartphone questionnaires four times a day over four to five days, measuring stressors, uplifts, positive and negative affect. Results showed that positive affect in carriers of the short allele (S) were less reactive to both uplifts and stressors. This pattern might reflect relative affective inflexibility in S allele carriers. • The study is well written, the topic of high interest and the statistical analysis using an EMA approach is creative. • However, the duration of data collection 4-5 days is rather short. The possibility to be confronted with a major stressor is rather low and if it happens this might be a spurious effect. • There are no clear hypotheses. Contrary to the results one would expect higher mood variability in s-allele carriers with respect to negative emotions. • The authors argue that 5-HTTLPR is of interest due to its associations to personality traits of negative emotionality. Have the authors assessed measures of personality? Normally one would expect that personality explains far more variance than a single genetic polymorphism. Explained variance < 2 %. • The authors should in addition genotype for rs25531 which would allow a triallelic approach in evaluating their data. This is nowadays common standard in the analysis 5-HTTLPR. (Hu X, Oroszi G, Chun J, Smith TL, Goldman D, Schuckit MA . An expanded evaluation of the relationship of four alleles to the level of response to alcohol and the alcoholism risk. Alcohol Clin Exp Res 2005; 29: 8–16.) Reviewer #2: Review of PONE_D_20-03284 The study reported in this manuscript examines whether 5-HTTLPR operates as a genetic differential susceptibility factor for affective responding to daily events. The study addresses a highly relevant research question in a way that is novel in several aspects. It is based on interesting data from a reasonably sized sample, and uses sophisticated data-analytic techniques to tests its predictions. Nevertheless, I identified a few issues that deserve additional attention. I explain these below, along with some impressions and observations (which are a matter of taste rather than a formal evaluation of the paper). Abstract: I think the abstract should included some information on the sample and its size, (and maybe also on the analytic approach taken). Also, I suspect that the last sentence does not correspond to what the authors wanted to express (which is probably that the study provides insight into the serotonin system’s general role…). General point: In the sentence “Positive affect in carriers of the short allele…”, as well as in other parts of the manuscript, the authors make a comparison, but name only one comparison group (in this sentence the S-allele carriers), but not to which they are compared. I think these statements would gain clarity from complete descriptions of the comparisons. P3, last sentence (minor): I think that the reference to the compatibility of the DS with the heritability patterns from twin studies needs a bit more explanation to fulfill its function here. P4, 75ff. (minor): This second part of the paragraph is quite cursory and therefore not very informative and not very helpful. P4, 81ff.: When the 5-HTTLPR is introduced, it would be interesting if in a sentence or two, the authors would say something about the function of the region. P5, first paragraph: I think this paragraph needs some revision. The first observation the authors name does not support the hypothesis for the 5-HTTLPR to be a differential susceptibility factor. This first observation simply points to gap in research. It is not clear to me what the authors want to point to with the Sagy & Antonovsky 2000 reference. Then the second observation provides some ground for a DS hypothesis, but it is not the fact that most studies did not further examine this, that is informative. Finally, the “consequently” doesn’t really fit here to introduce the first partial sentence, and similarly, the second partial sentence doesn’t follow logically after the “but”. Also related to this paragraph, I would find it important if the authors provided some insight into the literature and maybe a few sample studies that point to susceptibility of positive experience (e.g., Koenen’s work or Way at al., 2006). P5, 114ff.: I think this paragraph addresses a very important point and strength of this study. However, the last sentence, as formulated, may be correct but is not specific to the DS hypothesis, as it would apply as well to a vulnerability hypothesis. General point about EMA data and reactivity: This part has an implicit causal “touch”, and so it should be noted somewhere that we cannot draw conclusions about causality or a causal direction, since these are correlational data. P6, 2nd paragraph, 130ff: The reference to the van Roekel et al study is interesting, but I think more detail is necessary to make this point with sufficient clarity. There is a long way from within-subject associations of daily experiences and affect, to AR(1)measures of emotional inertia, to the concept of emotional flexibility. The second sentence, at 132 ff., is unclear and maybe incomplete. Section “Participants”: This section suggests that an a priori power analysis has been conducted to determine the necessary sample size. Therefore, the authors should report the sample size determined to achieve adequate power here. They can still give the details on the power analysis later on. P8, 193ff (minor): Because the authors begin a new paragraph, it was not immediately clear to me that the EFA still referred to the PANAS. Daily events: Could the authors provide more detail on this measure? It would be useful to know the instruction, and specially the labels used with the visual analogue scale. I was a bit surprised to see that the occurrence of an event was measured on a 0-100 scale, given that the scale measures events (but as someone who does a lot of EMA research I see the advantage of this approach). My concern would be that this kind of measures also taps into mood, and might spuriously inflate correlations with panas measures. I was glad to see that the authors didn’t report an alpha for the daily events measure, and fully agree with their justification! Something that I was wondering about was whether this wouldn’t apply to the PANAS, too. Probably not when it is used to measure mood-like affective states without particular emotional experiences occurring. Given the consistency scores reported, this seems to be the case here. This might be relevant to the interpretation of the results, since we’re probably not dealing with distinct emotional responses here, but rather with moderate shifts in participants mood. P10, 224: Could the authors say more about the lack of power they refer here? P10 230: I think it would be useful if the authors provided their rationale for using these contrasts here. Why not contrasting both groups of S allele carriers from the homozygous L allele carriers? P11: Was there an association between genotype and variability on affect and daily experience variables? P11, 262, minor: “Compared to” might fit better here than “instead”. P13, 299-305 (minor): This paragraph is not very precise and therefore not easy to read (beginning: do you refer to one or more associations?). No difference on what? … more susceptible to what? From the context, one can figure out what you mean, but complete and more precise formulations would help. Results, general point: The effects, particularly that of testing differential susceptibility, is rather small. Did the authors expect an effect of this size, and do they consider it relevant nevertheless? I think it would be important that the authors commented on the effect sizes. Discussion: General point: The discussion is relatively brief, if the piece on false positives is not counted. I would have hoped for a more elaborate discussion of the specifics of what the authors have actually studied. The study period was quite brief, and similar studies collecting binary indications of daily events have occurred find relatively few such events, particularly negative ones, with a sizable portion of the sample report no negative events at all within a 4- or 5-day period. Are the authors convinced that all participants experienced clearly positive and negative events during the 4 or 5 days? This may point to the possibility that what was studied here was not necessarily emotional reactivity to events, in the sense of significant responses with an adaptive goal, but rather mild fluctuations of positivity as a function of relatively ordinary experiences. Some situations may be evaluated as more or less positive or negative, without representing a challenge or opportunity that would deserve a specific response. The average of uplifts and stressors seem clearly above 0, but given that participants probably reported with a finger on a smartphone display (not sure that this is how it was done), it may still be that much of the ratings at the lower 10-20% of the scale range may represent indications of no major event occurring. At least this is the experience we’re making with these kinds of tools. All these possibilities may or may not have led to an attenuation of the “real” moderator effects. It could be interesting to see whether setting the threshold for registering an event to a value above the lowest 25% of the VAS would yield the same results. P18, 390 (minor): Although the authors note that they expect stronger associations for s allele carriers in the intro, it was not too clear to me that they did have this expectation since it is not marked clearly as a hypothesis. P19, top: the reference to the dynamic system is unclear. I suggest that the authors either provide more detail about it, or delete the reference. In the next sentence, it is not clear what levels the authors refer to. Generally, I think this sentence must be rewritten. I think I know what they authors mean, but the sentence lacks precision and sufficient information for the reader less familiar with the topic. General remark about the discussion: I find it important and interesting that the authors try to connect these results with other phenomena related to emotional adaptation and adjustment, and patterns of emotion patterns. However, this research did not examine flexibility or emotion patterns, and sometimes the authors risk to be overly speculative. Also, the cover a large number of different topics, each one hinting at some research and touching those only very superficially. Several parts of the discussion are therefore accessible only to the readers deeply familiar with the topic. Less (with more detail) would be more here. The following papers may be relevant to this study. Schoebi, D., Way, B. M., Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (2012). Genetic moderation of sensitivity to positive and negative affect in marriage. Emotion, 12(2), 208. Haase, C. M., Saslow, L. R., Bloch, L., Saturn, S. R., Casey, J. J., Seider, B. H., ... & Levenson, R. W. (2013). The 5-HTTLPR polymorphism in the serotonin transporter gene moderates the association between emotional behavior and changes in marital satisfaction over time. Emotion, 13(6), 1068. ********** 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: Dominik Schoebi [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 to be viewed.] 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 us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 1 |
PONE-D-20-03284R1 Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events PLOS ONE Dear Mr. Sicorello, 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. Thank you for your careful revision of your manuscript, taking most points of the reviewers into account. As you can see below, the two reviewers have some remaining points and one of them raises that your revision was not yet satisfactory in addressing their concerns. I invite you to revise your manuscript addressing specifically the points of reviewer #1 on referring to literature on the relationship between personality and differential susceptibility and clarifying your aim regarding personality versus individual differences in susceptibility; regarding point (3), the additional analyses for the genotype rs25531: if you cannot do those analyses in the near future due to closed labs, I recommend you explaining that in your manuscript, if you can do those analyses within the next weeks, you should add the results to the manuscript. Regarding reviewer #2's comments: the point about a-priori power analysis and post-hoc power calculation is well made, using another publication's effect size to calculate an a-priori sample size would be appropriate, so this should be amended in the manuscript; also, some clarification around the wording for dynamic systems/reactivity would be helpful. We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jun 25 2020 11:59PM. When you are 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. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Hedwig Eisenbarth Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for your careful revision of your manuscript, taking most points of the reviewers into account. Your revised version has improved significantly, however, there are some remaining points that need to be addressed. [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 #1: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #2: (No Response) ********** 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 ********** 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 ********** 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 ********** 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: 1. There has been, to our knowledge, no attempt to develop a theory which systematically links trait measures like the big five to the concept of differential susceptibility. In the big five models of context sensitivity we are aware of, neuroticism is related to negative and extraversion to positive sensitivity (e.g. Larsen & Ketelaar, 1991). Past attempts to relate big five measures to differential susceptibility have not been successful (e.g. Slagt et al., 2015). Therefore, we think adding to this literature necessitates are more comprehensive paper based on a plausible theoretical framework. There is abundance of literature showing that personality traits are related to differential susceptibility. No matter what the authors mean with “differential susceptibility” if they mean variability in mood (states) or susceptibility to psychopathology. Neuroticism is defined a s a trait related to the predisposition to be “moody” and there is clear proneness for anxiety or affective disorders (e.g. De Moor et al., 2015). 2. A meta-analysis of large-scale genome-wide association studies reported no association between big five personality traits and serotonergic genes, including the 5-HTTLPR (Lot et al., 2017). Therefore, we think there is currently no sufficient basis to include personality measures in a paper that focuses on the 5-HTTLPR. Bad argument, sorry. You are not aiming to demonstrate an association between 5-HTTLPR and personality. You aim to explain variance in susceptibility. If predictors are uncorrelated this is a clear advantage for explaining additional variance in your dependent variable. 3. The authors should in addition genotype for rs25531 which would allow a triallelic approach in evaluating their data. This is nowadays common standard in the analysis 5-HTTLPR. Response: We would like to refrain from additional genotyping, for two reasons, and hope this is acceptable. The first one is practical; due to the current situation caused by the Corona virus, our laboratories have been shut, and it is unclear when we can resume our work. Second, although in vitro gene expression studies have shown that the G allele within the 5-HTTLPR l-allele was associated with lower 5HTT expression (Hu 2006), this finding has not been consistently replicated (Martin 2007). Furthermore, in other studies, examination of triallelic variation did not modify the results (e.g., Huezo-Diaz 2007, Steiger 2009, Wüst 2009). As I already said, the triallelic approach is common standard when genotyping for 5-HTTLPR. Technically, you can run this in the same analysis, with the exception with an enzymatic digestion in-between. I am confident that the laboratories will open soon. And one person alone can conduct the analyses safely alone in the lab. Reviewer #2: I think the authors did a great job responding to my comments. I only have two additional comments, which the authors may consider: 1. Regarding (a priori) power analysis (or not)/ comment 10: I my first review, I misread the relevant section, and I think this was for a good reason (or logic). If there were prior genetic studies on the same effect (Gunthert et al), then why not using those data for an a priori power analysis - just as the authors seem to have done post hoc? That would seem possible to me, and that's why I mistakenly thought an a priori power analysis has been done. Besides, if not for using information of a prior study for a power analysis, I don't see how a prior study can inform about what sample size to aim for. 2. (referring to my comment 22): Regarding this and some of my other comments on the discussion, the authors seem to have a slightly different opinion, in some instances, on where and how to set the emphasis, which is fair enough and totally ok for me. The one minor point where I think it is worth giving it another thought is their reference to investigate reactivity as a dynamic system. I totally agree about the importance of testing such effects on the within-subject level. But I'm not sure it is clear what they investigated as a dynamic system. Reactivity is dynamic per definition, so this sentence seems a little tautological. ********** 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: Yes: Dominik Schöbi [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 to be viewed.] 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 us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. |
Revision 2 |
PONE-D-20-03284R2 Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sicorello, 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. I'm very sorry for the delay of this process, but I wanted to get an additional view as the two reviewers differed in their view. Can I please ask you to address/answer the two questions of reviewer #3, please? Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 18 2020 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:
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: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Hedwig Eisenbarth Academic Editor PLOS ONE [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 Reviewer #3: (No Response) ********** 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: I think the authors addressed my earlier comments appropriately. I thought my fellow reviewer pointed out other potentially important issues. Reviewer #3: I was asked to review this manuscript, while not being involved in the previous revisions. I honestly have to say I started out skeptical, due to the current state of the field with regard to candidate gene studies. However, I was pleasantly surprised. I think the authors did a great job in rigorously testing the hypotheses, and were very nuanced and complete in interpreting their findings. This included discussing the limitations, but also the controversies surrounding candidate gene studies. I was a bit hesitant with regard to the difference scores that were used to test differential susceptibility. I think these scores have many problems, as the authors also state in their Discussion. The analyses split for events and affect provide much more insight into the mechanisms. I am also not convinced that averaging the event scores is the best solution, as certain events may be more impactful than others. However, given the state of the manuscript and potential issues with multiple testing, I will not ask for different analyses. I have two remarks/questions: (1) the authors use a three-level model (moment, day, person); did they check whether the second (day) level was required? I could not find whether the study period included week days only or also weekend days. (2) I agree with reviewer 1 that the tri-allelic approach is preferable, so if it would be possible, this would be nice to add. However, I can also imagine that labs are still not working on full speed currently. Finally, I would like to stress that I think that pre-registration and direct replication is essential in these studies, and I would advise the authors to do this next time. Particularly in this field, pre-registration may help to solve the inconsistencies in previous work. ********** 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 Reviewer #3: Yes: Eeske van Roekel [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. |
Revision 3 |
Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events PONE-D-20-03284R3 Dear Dr. Sicorello, 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, Hedwig Eisenbarth 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 #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 #3: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? 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 #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 #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 #3: (No Response) ********** 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 #3: Yes: Eeske van Roekel |
Formally Accepted |
PONE-D-20-03284R3 Highs and lows: Genetic susceptibility to daily events Dear Dr. Sicorello: 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. Hedwig Eisenbarth Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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