Genetic Environments of Plasmid-Mediated blaCTXM-15 Beta-Lactamase Gene in Enterobacteriaceae from Africa
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In my opinion, the submitted manuscript of Awosile & Agbaje is acceptable for publication. It is prepared carefully and the description of the methodology for including publications in the review is transparent. Also, the discussed issue does not raise any objections and is currently important in the time of increasing drug resistance.
Perhaps this is not an exceptionally new issue and the approach is also not unique, which the authors are aware of, but the geographical location of the research certainly brings a sufficient novelty here. In addition, the issue is treated briefly but seems to cover the topic, so although in the context of reviews this manuscript do not meet the criterion accepted by the journal but there is no need to extend this topic in the opinion of reviewer.
Author Response
Thank you for your review and observations. We recognized that this manuscript is not comprehensive enough and a systematic review would have been appropriate. However, we think this narrative review may kick start the discussion on the need for more research in the epidemiological study of this internationally disseminated beta-lactamase resistance gene as there are limited information and research in this regard in Africa. We think down the road, a more comprehensive review will be done and this manuscript may serve as baseline literature. Thanks
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors present a non-systematic review describing a beta-lactamase gene in Enterobacteriaceae from Africa. While the study objective is interesting, the number of research articles that were included in the study is very limited. It would be interesting if the authors included epidemiological info from all the continents and emphasized on Africa. How the insertion sequence profiles among Enterobacteriaceae in Africa compares with the rest of the world? Authors used “commonly located”, “most common”, “associated with” and other similar terms in the abstract as well as throughout the manuscript. The authors are suggested to replace these vague terms with appropriate numerical representatives (e.g., percentage, ratio, absolute number, correlation coefficient, etc).
Author Response
Thank you for your review and observations.
Reviewer: the number of research articles that were included in the study is very limited. It would be interesting if the authors included epidemiological info from all the continents and emphasized Africa. How the insertion sequence profiles among Enterobacteriaceae in Africa compare with the rest of the world?
Author's response: We recognized the limited articles included in this review as one of the limitations of this study. However, We also need to note the limited published articles on this subject matter in Africa. Our focus was to provide a narrative review that can serve as baseline literature for a future comprehensive review and also point out the need for more research on this internationally disseminated beta-lactamase resistance gene. This limitation was added to the manuscript from lines 263-266.
We did include necessary epidemiological information on how the genetic environment of blaCTXM-15 differs and related to other parts of the world. This can be found from line 177-180, 183-187, 198-205, 211-224
Reviewer: Authors used “commonly located”, “most common”, “associated with” and other similar terms in the abstract as well as throughout the manuscript. The authors are suggested to replace these vague terms with appropriate numerical representatives (e.g., percentage, ratio, absolute number, correlation coefficient, etc).
Author's response: We made necessary changes in the manuscript to be as precise as possible. We removed the words like commonly and replaced them with exact count throughout the manuscript. This is reflected in the result section as evident in line 154 and line 159, line 162 of the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors want to describe the genetic environment of plasmid mediated blaCTXM-15 of African origin from literature.
Major comments:
The names of genes and plasmid replicons and insertion sequences throughout the whole manuscript:
-IS in the name of any insertion sequence is not in italic only the number after that. (for example line: 16,18,40,50,...)
-Table 1: same comment for IS. genes should not start with capital letters, CTXM and OXA and SHV are bla genes as mentioned in your manuscript elsewhere. Plasmid replicon "Inc" are not in italic. Inc A/C doesnt exist anymore its either IncA or IncC also for IncL/M.
Authors should add a figure displaying the different genetic environment discussed in the manuscript to show the variability and make it better understandable for the readers,
Author Response
Thanks for your review and observations. This has improved the quality of the manuscript.
Major comments:
The names of genes and plasmid replicons and insertion sequences throughout the whole manuscript:
-IS in the name of any insertion sequence is not in italic only the number after that. (for example line: 16,18,40,50,...)
Author's response: We made all the corrections throughout the manuscript. Thanks
-Table 1: same comment for IS. genes should not start with capital letters, CTXM and OXA and SHV are bla genes as mentioned in your manuscript elsewhere. Plasmid replicon "Inc" are not in italic. Inc A/C doesnt exist anymore its either IncA or IncC also for IncL/M.
Author's response: Thanks for the observations, we have done the corrections in table 1 and throughout the manuscript.
Authors should add a figure displaying the different genetic environment discussed in the manuscript to show the variability and make it better understandable for the readers,
Author's response: We have added figure 1 to the manuscript depicting the schematic representations of the genetic environment of blaCTXM-15 described in the text.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Figure 1: Does each arrow represent a gene to scale within the region? CTX-M-15 should be put as subscript in the figure legend.
Text: "Enterobacteriaceae" should not be italicized. "Enterobacterial" should not have a capital e. Suggest a thorough revision for anomaly in nomenclature and other syntax errors. I could not pinpoint some of these errors for not having line numbers.
Author Response
Reviewer: Figure 1: Does each arrow represent a gene to scale within the region? CTX-M-15 should be put as subscript in the figure legend.
Authors: Thanks for your observation. The arrow represents the direction e.g. ISEcp1 located upstream start of codon of blaCTXM-15 and orf447 located downstream. From the version, we submitted CTXM-15 was in subscript throughout.
Reviewer: Text: "Enterobacteriaceae" should not be italicized. "Enterobacterial" should not have a capital e. Suggest a thorough revision for anomaly in nomenclature and other syntax errors. I could not pinpoint some of these errors for not having line numbers.
Authors: Necessary correction was made and this can be found in line 2, 33, 77,83, 102, 108, 119, 125, 133, 134, 145, 171, 173, 176, 213, 237, 242, 244, 257, 258, 262
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments were addressed.
Author Response
Thanks for your review.
