Phytochemical, Antimicrobial and Cytotoxic Activities of Gaultheria Trichophylla Royle
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In materials and methods section is not clear in the antimicrobial part, the initial inoculum of fungi and bacteria.
Table 5 is not clear some letters of the statistical analysis, is not clear if the comparation is in columns or rows, or both
Table 6 is difficult to read, is suitable if authors can separate in two tables, one for gram positives and another for gram negatives,
Figure 2 is suitable to include an statistical analysis in order to improve your discussion
Figures 1 and 3 is not necessary, is not clear, images are pixeled.
Author Response
Reviewer 1
In materials and methods section is not clear in the antimicrobial part, the initial inoculum of fungi and bacteria.
- Worthy reviewer thank you for pointing out the mistake the respective section has been revised as follows:
Briefly, 0.75ml of the broth culture containing108 colony forming units (CFU) per ml of the test strain was added to 75ml of nutrient agar medium at 45°C, mixed well, and then poured into a 14cm sterile petri plate.
- Hopefully it will be ok now.
Table 5 is not clear some letters of the statistical analysis, is not clear if the comparation is in columns or rows, or both
- Worthy reviewer the statistical terms were accordingly defined in the revised manuscript to make them clear.
- The comparisons are done column wise for each strains using different extracts.
Table 6 is difficult to read, is suitable if authors can separate in two tables, one for gram positives and another for gram negatives.
- Worthy reviewer the table was made simple and the font size was adjusted. Worthy reviewer as this table showed the antimicrobial spectrum of the extracts to separate them into two tables is although not a problem as both will be about the same biological activity therefore will create confusion in the mind of readers as both would have the same caption.
Figure 2 is suitable to include an statistical analysis in order to improve your discussion
- Sorry worthy reviewer we couldn’t understand your point.
Figures 1 and 3 is not necessary, is not clear, images are pixeled.
- Worthy reviewer the resolution and contrast of the mentioned figure were accordingly improved hopefully they will be ok now.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscripte is acceptable in its present form
Author Response
Reviewer 2
The manuscripte is acceptable in its present form
- Thank you worthy reviewer for your positive input.
Reviewer 3 Report
As far as I am concerned the manuscript is well written. The subject area of research is significant in knowledge development. The introduction is interesting and correct.
The test methods are described very briefly, but sufficiently.
My comments relate to the editing of the manuscript:
Tables 1 and 2 are hardly legible. In my opinion, column 1 should be left aligned. There are no subscripts for the formulas in table 2.
In Table 5, one of the homogeneous groups is not in the superscript, in the column 'Fusarium solani' in the standard deviations, the value before the decimal point is missing. Standard deviations are sometimes given two decimal places and other times three.
Table 6 is not readable, I suggest reducing the font size.
Figure 3 is blurry, it can reduce it to make the fruit clearer.
There is often no space in front of the unit, e.g. l. 190; 200-201; 232; 237
What do % mean after standard deviations? l. 220-225
Author Response
Reviewer 3
As far as I am concerned the manuscript is well written. The subject area of research is significant in knowledge development. The introduction is interesting and correct. The test methods are described very briefly, but sufficiently.
- Thank you worthy reviewer for the positive comments.
The comments relate to the editing of the manuscript:
Tables 1 and 2 are hardly legible. In my opinion, column 1 should be left aligned. There are no subscripts for the formulas in table 2.
- Thank you worthy reviewer the formatting was made accordingly.
In Table 5, one of the homogeneous groups is not in the superscript, in the column 'Fusarium solani' in the standard deviations, the value before the decimal point is missing. Standard deviations are sometimes given two decimal places and other times three.
- Thank you worthy reviewer the formatting was made accordingly.
Table 6 is not readable, I suggest reducing the font size.
- Thank you worthy reviewer the formatting was made accordingly.
Figure 3 is blurry, it can reduce it to make the fruit clearer.
- Worthy reviewer the resolution and contrast of the mentioned figure were accordingly improved hopefully they will be ok now.
There is often no space in front of the unit, e.g. l. 190; 200-201; 232; 237
- Worthy reviewer the formatting was made accordingly.
What do % mean after standard deviations? l. 220-225
- Worthy reviewer percentage was calculated in replicate which means each mean will fall within three standard deviations of the mean. It was written with the average value not with the standard deviation.
Reviewer 4 Report
Following your request to review this manuscript, this is my report which contains some remarks. In this paper entitled ' Phytochemical, antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of Gaul-2 theria trichophylla Royle ' The authors described phytochemical, antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of Gaul-2 theria trichophylla Royle. The work is well done, carefully thought out, and performed and the manuscript is well written and falls within the scope of Applied Sciences. To emphasize the MS for being suitable for consideration in Applied Sciences, I have comments as follows:
• Regarding the plant identification, authors are invited to the add voucher number of plant identification
· Authors are kindly invited to provide more data on the plant; where is it from? (GPS coordinates), data on plant harvest such as the date and packaging are also required.
· Regarding phytochemical studies, authors are invited to use HPLC analysis to figure out the potentially bioactive compounds in the extracts
· Why authors used methanol as a solvent, which is known for its toxicity.
· Regarding statistical analysis, authors need to separate this section form from Antibacterial activity assay.
• Authors mentioned that they used one-way ANOVA without mentioning, which post hoc test was used in the following steps. Did authors check for normality of distributions?. Did the authors check for homogeneity of variances ?. Prior to the use of a post hoc test, you should check for normality by using the Shapiro–Wilks test and the assumption of homogeneity of variance should be evaluated using Levene’s test. For concentration data that are normally distributed, a parametric test is required to be used as post hoc test. For concentration data that are not normally distributed, the data can be transformed using the natural log (ln) of (x + 1) and then parametric statistics applied or you can apply the appropriate non-parametric statistics,
• English needs a sustainable revision
Author Response
Reviewer 4
Following your request to review this manuscript, this is my report which contains some remarks. In this paper entitled ' Phytochemical, antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of Gaul-2 theria trichophylla Royle ' The authors described phytochemical, antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities of Gaul-2 theria trichophylla Royle. The work is well done, carefully thought out, and performed and the manuscript is well written and falls within the scope of Applied Sciences.
- Thank you worthy reviewer for your encouraging remarks.
To emphasize the MS for being suitable for consideration in Applied Sciences, I have comments as follows:
- Regarding the plant identification, authors are invited to the add voucher number of plant identification
- Worthy reviewer the voucher number as “ISL-112304” was accordingly added in the revising manuscript.
- Authors are kindly invited to provide more data on the plant; where is it from? (GPS coordinates), data on plant harvest such as the date and packaging are also required.
- Worthy reviewer the required detailed have been added accordingly in the revised manuscript.
- Regarding phytochemical studies, authors are invited to use HPLC analysis to figure out the potentially bioactive compounds in the extracts
- Worthy reviewer the availability is out of order at this stage and your suggestion will be incorporated in the upcoming manuscript.
- Why authors used methanol as a solvent, which is known for its toxicity.
- Worthy reviewer methanol is the most commonly used extraction solvent due to its high polarity which could produce high extraction yields. As for its toxicity is concerned it is an volatile solvent which can easily be evaporated. For the systemic uses they are applied in a compatible solvent like ethanol.
- Regarding statistical analysis, authors need to separate this section form from Antibacterial activity assay.
- Worthy reviewer they were separated accordingly.
- Authors mentioned that they used one-way ANOVA without mentioning, which post hoctest was used in the following steps. Did authors check for normality of distributions? Did the authors check for homogeneity of variances ?. Prior to the use of a post hoc test, you should check for normality by using the Shapiro–Wilks test and the assumption of homogeneity of variance should be evaluated using Levene’s test. For concentration data that are normally distributed, a parametric test is required to be used as post hoc test. For concentration data that are not normally distributed, the data can be transformed using the natural log (ln) of (x + 1) and then parametric statistics applied or you can apply the appropriate non-parametric statistics,
- Worthy reviewer we have tested the assumptions that whether the data is normally distributed, so that we have first used Shapiro-Wilks test. Based on the analysis we found that the data was normally distributed (P > 0.05). Further the data was subjected to one-way analysis of variance but since ANOVA is omnibus test statistics, therefore we used Tukey’s HSD test as a post hoc for determining specific group differences.
- English needs a sustainable revision
- Worthy reviewer the paper was carefully revised with the help of language expert hopefully it will be ok now.
