A New Approach for Environmental Risk Assessments of Living Modified Organisms in South Korea
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Yoo et al., presented a nice work, discussing a new approach for environmental risk assessments of living modified organisms in South Korea. I think the manuscript deserves publication with only a few minor modifications.
Add a discussion section, where you provide a detailed analysis of the results. You should also discuss the application of the approach in related fields. and possibly discuss future research directions. How this work would contribute to the advance of science in this field?
You may also have a look on Tatomir et al. (2018) (https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-45-185-2018) as they developed a framework for environmental risk assessments.
Author Response
- Yoo et al., presented a nice work, discussing a new approach for environmental risk assessments of living modified organisms in South Korea. I think the manuscript deserves publication with only a few minor modifications. Add a discussion section, where you provide a detailed analysis of the results. You should also discuss the application of the approach in related fields. And possibly discuss future research directions. How this work would contribute to the advance of science in this field? You may also have a look on Tatomir et al. (2018) (https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-45-185-2018) as they developed a framework for environmental risk assessments.
→Response: Thank you for your comment to improve our manuscript. The provision of a detailed analysis of the results suggested by the reviewers was added to the “Results and Discussion” section. Also, the future application of the new approach has been added to the “Results and Discussion” section.
Reviewer 2 Report
Applied Science Review Report
General comments: -
The topic is very interesting and has a great impact for the field. The manuscript is fairly written and suitable to be published in the Applied Science Journal after taking care of some MINOR comments.
Detailed comments: -
In general, please avoid using the personal pronouns (I, We, our) as it was found line 12 (We propose), Line 75: our findings and more. Please apply this rule throughout the manuscript.
Keywords:
Please add Modified Organisms to the keywords list.
Abstract:
The aim is not clearly stated in this section. Please state the aim or the objectives clear and specific. It is better to write the aim of this study was to propose a risk assessment tool.
Introduction:
This section needs to be enriched and expand by adding more background about the topic
Materials and Methods:
The experimental design is adequate and suitable to the current study.
Results and Discussion:
This section is ok and the data is well presented but the discussion needs some modification
Line 228-241: this part is not clear and difficult to understands. Please rewrite
Discussion:
This section is ok, but the author is advised to add some recommendations for future work base on this study.
This study provided a new risk assessment tool which is reliable and efficient, But I think this tool must be examined and investigated furthermore in a large scale. The authors should provide a design for a further and a bigger study based on the current work findings in order to go public and apply this tool.
Author Response
Detailed comments:
- In general, please avoid using the personal pronouns as it was found line 12 (We propose), Line 75: our findings and more. Please apply this rule throughout the manuscript.
→Response: Thank you for your comment to improve our manuscript. According to reviewer’s comment, we revised the personal pronouns of the manuscript.
Keywords:
- Please add Modified Organisms to the keywords list.
→Response: According to reviewer’s comment, we added the "Living Modified Organisms" to the “Keywords” section.
Abstract:
- The aim is not clearly stated in this section. Please state the aim or the objectives clear and specific. It is better to write the aim of this study was to propose a risk assessment tool.
→Response: According to reviewer’s suggestion, we revised the “Abstract” section.
Introduction:
- This section needs to be enriched and expand by adding more background about the topic.
→Response: Thank you for insightful comments. The “Introduction” section was revised to clear and concise the background of the topics.
Results and Discussion:
- This section is ok and the data is well presented but the discussion needs some modification Line 228-241: this part is not clear and difficult to understand. Please rewrite.
→Response: According to reviewer’s comment, we revised the “Results and Discussion” section.
Discussion:
- This section is ok, but the author is advised to add some recommendations for future work base on this study.
→ Response: According to reviewer’s comment, we revised the “Conclusions” section.
- This study provided a new risk assessment tool which is reliable and efficient, But I think this tool must be examined and investigated furthermore in a large scale. The authors should provide a design for a further and a bigger study based on the current work findings in order to go public and apply this tool.
→Response: Thank you for your kind comments. We agree with the reviewer's comment. This study aims to prepare guidelines for LMO environmental risk assessment for Lepidoptera that can be applied in South Korea. Therefore, we plan to conduct a risk assessment on other targets as well as Lepidoptera, and non-target arthropods based on the food chain in the future. We will develop a risk assessment guide for each species based on this. According to reviewer’s comment, we revised the “Results and Discussion” section.
Reviewer 3 Report
The work presented by Yoo et al, seeks to develop and evaluate a new for assessing risk of living
modified organisms by using Nicotiana tabacum as an ectopic transient expression system. Overall,
Overall, this work presents some doses of novelty, however, the completeness and rigorousness of the
paper are challenged due to several major issues.
First, the authors try to highlight the limitations of recombinant LM proteins, yet, the new approach does
not solve the challenges of recombinant LM proteins. Besides, does the new approach can replace the
current risk assessment of living modified organisms? I am afraid not.
Second, the ectopic transient expression of target proteins in tobacco hardly can be described as “stable”
in vivo.
Third, the introduction part is a bit wordy.
Author Response
: The work presented by Yoo et al, seeks to develop and evaluate a new for assessing risk of living modified organisms by using Nicotiana tabacum as an ectopic transient expression system. Overall, this work presents some doses of novelty, however, the completeness and rigorousness of the paper are challenged due to several major issues.
1. First, the authors try to highlight the limitations of recombinant LM proteins, yet, the new approach does not solve the challenges of recombinant LM proteins. Besides, does the new approach can replace the current risk assessment of living modified organisms? I am afraid not.
→Response: Thank you for your comment to improve our manuscript. As the reviewer suggested, using recombinant LM protein is also no big problem as a traditional method of laboratory trials used for toxicity tests. In describing the manuscript to emphasize the effectiveness of the new risk assessment tool was expressed somewhat negatively in the evaluation method using recombinant LM protein treated artificial feed. Primarily, we know that the manuscript is written in a biased direction to emphasize that the transporter of a target protein is more effective in plants than artificial feed. We agree with the reviewer's comments, so we revised the discussion and conclusion parts. We hope for your kind understanding.
2. Second, the ectopic transient expression of target proteins in tobacco hardly can be described as “stable” in vivo.
→Response: The stability of transient plant-expressed proteins has been demonstrated in many studies. In particular, in the pharmaceutical field, Chen et al. (2013) reported the usefulness of the production method through syringe infiltration in the production of pharmaceutical proteins, and plant-derived proteins produced through vacuum infiltration are being developed (ref: Chen, Q. et al. Agroinfiltration as an effective and scalable strategy of gene transfer for pharmaceutical protein production. Adv Tech Biol Med. 2013). In the same way, our findings indicated that Vip3A protein expressed in transiently expressed plants showed a uniform distribution and stable pattern similar to recombinant proteins directly treated in artificial feed assay (Figures 3 and 4). Through this, it was confirmed that the transiently expressed protein also functions stably for a certain period. However, we ask for your understanding as it seems to have confused the judges by not clearly expressing the part about the stability of transiently expressed proteins in writing the manuscript to emphasize the effect of the protein risk assessment. According to reviewer’s comment, we revised our manuscript.
3. Third, the introduction part is a bit wordy.
→Response: Thank you for the helpful comments. According to reviewer’s comment, the “Introduction” section has been partially revised so that the background on the topics of this study can be clear and concise.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors addressed my previous comments
