Diversity and Distribution of Culturable Thermus Species in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this work, the authors describe the isolation and identification of several species of the genus Thermus in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China. Overall it is an exciting and well-written work.

Introduction:

In my opinion, the introduction needs to be improved by describing in more detail the peculiar characteristics of the Thermus genus and its impact in the last 30 years on a biotechnological level.

The link at line 48 doesn't work.

Lines 52-53: Furthermore, it would be important to list which species and strains of the genus Thermus have already been identified

Materials and Methods:

Lines 86-90 there is a need for bibliographic support or a better description of the method of "visual screening" of the Thermus-like colonies.

DNA extraction and PCR amplifications: please provide the manufacturer of the chemicals used

Results:

In my opinion, table 2 should be reconsidered entirely. It is not clear, and even the caption does not provide the key to read it correctly.

Probably I'm wrong, but the representation in figure 2-3-4-5 is not a circular diagram as written in the caption.

Conclusion

In my opinion, it would be better to put the conclusions in a separate paragraph.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

L15: specify the research objective in the abstract

L11-14: too long 'introduction'

Badly formatted literature. Please correct according to the template.

The introduction should give more information about Thermus sp. At the moment the reader does not know why to study this bacterium at all. What is the point. The introduction is too short and does not give a justification for the choice of object and purpose of the study.

Abbreviations from L66 should be found in Table 1.

Table 1: What does the "/" in some rows mean? should be explained. Why so many isolation temperature measurements in the table? What do the abbreviations 4, 5, 8A etc. in the hot spring column mean?

 L103: give the sequence of primers.

L134: if "10 hot springs" then I "17 samples"

Figure 1: explain the symbols in the figure or give a reference to where they are explained (Dl, Dh etc.)

Figure 2, 3, 4, 5: completely unreadable.

Figure 7: explain the symbols in the figure or give a reference to where they are explained (8A, 8C, 4#, 6# etc.)

L261-272; 276-286: this is not a discussion but results.

L296-297: very old citations

Please very much standardize the notation of numbers throughout the paper. Once the authors write in words sevennasa, four, ten etc. and once they use numerical notation. this should be standardized.

Author Response

please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript "Diversity and Distribution of Culturable Thermus Species in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China" deals with the understanding of distribution of Thermus species in Yunnan province. The data are well presented, there is a typo in the word "conclusion", but the manuscript is in line with the scope of the journal and worth to be published in Diversity.

Author Response

The manuscript "Diversity and Distribution of Culturable Thermus Species in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China" deals with the understanding of distribution of Thermus species in Yunnan province. The data are well presented, there is a typo in the word "conclusion", but the manuscript is in line with the scope of the journal and worth to be published in Diversity.

Answer:

We have accepted the suggestion and corrected the spelling mistake (see revised version).

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript "Diversity and Distribution of Culturable Thermus Species in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China" is fairly well written and worth publishing in Diversity but it needs some revisions before it is published. The comments and suggestions are annotated in the PDF. Please get a native English speaker to read the manuscript before re-submit as the text has a quite a few grammar errors. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

This manuscript "Diversity and Distribution of Culturable Thermus Species in Terrestrial Hot Springs of Southwestern Yunnan Province in China" is fairly well written and worth publishing in Diversity but it needs some revisions before it is published. The comments and suggestions are annotated in the PDF. Please get a native English speaker to read the manuscript before re-submit as the text has a quite a few grammar errors. 

Answer:

We have carefully dealt with the reviewers' comments point by point and the details have been marked up in red-colored text. Some phraseological or gammar errors have been corrected.