Auxin Response Factors Are Ubiquitous in Plant Growth and Development, and Involved in Crosstalk between Plant Hormones: A Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a generally well written review on ARFs. Some suggestions are made to the authors to improve readability of the work. First of all, there are some parts in the manuscript that have some overlap of published texts, so the authors should rewrite these (lines 45-55; 97-121; 297-327 and subchapter 3). The authors should check the legibility of the figures since in some the letters are too small, specifically Fig. 1. The authors should always refer to their figures and table also in the text. Would it be possible to find also some illustration for other subchapters where there is no illustration at the moment, e.g. 4 or 5? The order of paragraphs could be improved, for example the part on root development follows fruit development and is before flower development. It is suggested to have e.g. leaf, root (or vice versa), then reproductive organs, floor, fruit. Then one separate chapter could be on embryo and seed development which is hidden in the chapter "other physiological processes". That part is a collection of features not really belonging together, so it is suggested to take parts out here which fit into other chapters (anthocyanin e.g. in fruit development). Then there could be one chapter on ARF and hormone crosstalk per se. In the part on Challenges also some descriptions on the functions are given, but these are not "challenges" per se, so that part can be shortened.
In general try not only to give the letters in front of the gene names, but also the plant species investigated, in most parts was that done, but in some it is missing, e.g. 100-105; also explain other gene names and their functions, e.g. lines 116-121.
In subchapter 3 there is a mix-up with own work, e.g. line 141 'our study' and also the figure was the result of an experiment? If that is published the authors need to refer to that work, if not then more information on the methodology is needed.
Root development, what about adventitious roots?
Biotic interactions: are there only two papers describing ARF in biotic interactions? If that is the case then it should be mentioned in addition to the sentence that there is not much work done.
Subchapter 7 consists of a collection of characters and should be rewritten and reorganised (see also comment above).
some more specific comments:
in the introduction the first sentence is not needed since it is too general. Find a better start. In the following you should refer to Table 1. Line 32, add identified as large gene families
Line 88: replace "for all living things", for all organisms
Line 100, do not start a sentence with "and"
Line 125: the statement that the ARF control leaf development is too strong, rephrase
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article entitled "Auxin response factors are ubiquitous in plant growth and development, and involved in crosstalk between plant hormones: a review" is well written and comprehensive review. However, it needs to rectify major comments and a few minor comments before acceptance.
Major comment 1: Figure 2, It seems the authors used experimental results here, in review it is not acceptable.
Minor comments
Line 30: Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), rice (Oryza 30
sativa), maize (Zea mays L.), tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), grapes (Vitis vinifera) Scientific name should be italics.
Line 56: In the legend of figure1, the full form of abbreviations like DBD, MR, PB1 must be eloborated.
line 66: write scientific name of strawberry as you used "Fa"
Line 85-109: Put appropriate references between this two paragraphs.
Line 159: "SlARF2"; Gene name should be italic throughout manuscript.
Line 409: The senetence "Data from related studies can be used
for further functional characterisation studies of ARFs based on overexpression, RNAi or
genome editing methods such as CRISPR-Cas9. The potential role of ARFs in these species
needs to be further explored and verified." should be re-write.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript is well written. It can be seen that the authors have done a great job of collecting and processing a large number of articles. The material is well structured. The manuscript contains visual material in the form of figures that are easy to read. But along with this, there are a few small comments. I believe that the manuscript can be published with minor edits:
1) On page 1, in lines 30-31, the specific Latin names of plants have the usual font. Correct to italics, as is customary in the world. And further along the text: p. 4, l 102
2) For strawberries on page 2 in line 66, give the Latin name "Fragaria ananassa" so that the abbreviation (FaARFs) would be clear.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
very nicely written revision
