Transcriptome Sequencing and Analysis of Genes Related to Sucrose Metabolism and Transporter of Paeonia ostii Seed with Sucrose Treatment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Sun and colleagues submitted an article on transcriptome analysis of genes in peony seeds related to sucrose metabolism. Leaves of three-year-old peony plants were sprayed either weekly with 50 g/l sucrose solution or distilled water. Seeds were collected 50 days after flowering. Next to transcriptome analysis of the seed components, the authors also analysed the content of sugars and plant hormones. The topic could be of interest to the readership of Agronomy. However, some issue need to be clarified before the manuscript is ready for publication.
Title: Transcriptome sequencing and analysis of differentially expressed genes related to sucrose metabolism and transporter of Paeonia ostii seed with sucrose treatment.
Please revise the title, it sounds a bit awkward.
Materials and Methods:
Section 2.1. Please add information on soil/substrate, temperature, humidity, irrigation…
How many plant replicates were used? How was the experimental design?
Why 50 days after flowering the analysis was performed, seeds were fully ripened. Please explain.
There is only one reference gene (ACTIN) used for the qPCR, how do they authors ensure that the gene is not co-regulated by the treatment? A co-regulation could influence the expression patterns. Were other reference genes tested or included in the qPCR analysis? Only one reference gene is not sufficient and another one should be included by the authors.
If the seed oil is of special interest, why the authors did not include the measurement of linolenic acid contents in seed oils, to consolidate their results from transcriptome and sugar analysis? Transcriptome analysis only tells half of the story. I also miss data on seed weight or seed development or any phenotype that shows the effect of sucrose spraying. As far as I understood from the introduction the sucrose spraying shall positively affect the seed development and plant growth, but these data are missing. The authors should provide a phenotype that justifies the
There is no Statistics section in the Materials and Methods, please add it.
Figures:
Figures 1, 3, 4. Please add full names for abbreviations like Co, En…in the figure legends.
Minor issues:
Line 44: Please define "…and so on" or delete the phrase
Line 87: Please rephrase: "…based on data quality, quantity and cost."
Line 109: Please add the cultivars name
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article “Transcriptome sequencing and analysis of differentially expressed genes related to sucrose metabolism and transporter of Paeonia ostii seed with sucrose treatment” by Jing Sun, Qian Cheng, Mi Liu, Hao Lei and Jun Tao is devoted to the identification of genes associated with sugar metabolism in tree peony seeds.
The work was done at a high methodological level and can be recommended for acceptance into the journal Agronomy with minor revisions.
I would like to make a few comments on the text of the manuscript.
In the Introduction, it is possible that the detailing of the areas where the tree peony is cultivated is redundant. This can be omitted. But it would be useful for readers of the article who are unfamiliar with such a species as a tree peony to familiarize themselves with the photo of this plant. It would also be desirable to give the photo of the seeds and indicate their size. All this could be placed in the Supplementary Materials.
In the last paragraph of the Introduction, rather, the results obtained are indicated, rather than the tasks that should have been resolved in this study. It is better to move it to the Conclusion. The Introduction also does not discuss why it was necessary to study the content of plant hormones.
In the Materials and Methods section, the amount of plant material taken for the study is not clear. Was there a repeat?
The Conclusion should be separated into a separate section.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Sucrose, one of the most important of the primary carbohydrate, plays a key role in plant cell and whole plant. Recently, more and more studies focused on the modulation of sucrose metabolism and sucrose transporters. In this manuscript, the authors carried out a transcriptome profiling to study the effects of exogenous application of sucrose on gene expression in Paeonia ostii seed.
To sum up, the manuscript was generally well organized and well written. Moreover, the authors present a very interesting topic. There are currently many interests in sucrose metabolism and sucrose allocation. It would be of wide interest to the plant community, flower industry and the “Agronomy” readers. However, I have some concerns about the manuscript, before publication:
1. The authors did not emphasize their interesting discoveries very well in the conclusion section. They should make some key points for the reader. Please revised this part.
2. The authors displayed exciting data in Figures 1 and 2. However, they failed to connect the soluble sugar and phytohormone data to the RNA seq data. They should use the RNA seq data to explain their observations of the effect of sucrose treatment on soluble sugar and phytohormone.
3. The authors did not provide enough information in the figure legion, especially in figure 6. They need to descript what means of the “grey color” and “black color”
4. The biological replicates are important for readers to understand the data present in the manuscript. The authors need to descript the No. of biological replicates in the figure legion such as Figures 1,2 and 6.
5. There are some language problems, such as on page 15 lines from 440 to 442: “the content of soluble sugar content appears increased and then maintain stable, among which the contents of glucose and fructose rose gradually.” There are two "content“, please check the language in the whole manuscript.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
