Revealing Fungal Diversity in Mesophilic and Thermophilic Habitats of Sewage Sludge Composting by Next-Generation Sequencing
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript on Revealing fungal diversity in mesophilic and thermophilic habitats of sewage sludge composting by next-generation sequencing is written well but the discussion and conclusion part should be improved.
Although it is a kind of metagenomics study for diversity analysis.
The applied part of the research is missing in this study.
Please explain. how you can use the study further?
Minor English editing is required.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your valuable comments. I believe peer review is very important for improving the manuscript's quality.
Regarding your comments and notes, we made minor changes to the discussion and conclusion. The text will become more challenging if more discussion is added.
We believe fundamental research is critical to understanding the state of the art of composting. Thus, based on the knowledge gained, we can manage this process. Our research will continue to develop to study the fungal enzymes in compost communities, allowing us to improve the compost quality, especially when using sewage sludge. As recent EU directive changes restrict the use of sewage sludge compost in agriculture, process improvement will be conducted for safer application for recreational purposes, reclamation of disturbed areas, etc.
Reviewer 2 Report
In the present manuscript, Petkova and Shilev studied the fungal diversity of sewage sludge composting via next generation sequencing in two mesophilic and thermophilic habitats. The research scientifically sound and the results are understandable. However, the writing needs some grammatical corrections such as spacing, punctuations, and spell check to improve. Some examples of these mistakes have been highlighted in the attached file.
following questions and comments.
- In the affiliations of the authors, city and country are missed. Could you please revise the affiliations?
Page1, Line 31 for the first time use of abbreviation, complete name should be written.
- In general, the introduction is briefly described while, in title, next-generation sequencing is entitled and nothing is written about this important part of study. It is highly recommended to add some details about the latest research regarding NGS.
- Could you please explain why in table 2, the difference between total base pairs and base pairs after QC is high and relatively significant?
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Please check the attached file.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, thank you for your valuable comments and notes. Please find below our response to them!
- In the affiliations of the authors, city and country are missed. Could you please revise the affiliations?
Reply: The affiliations are checked and corrected.
Page1, Line 31 for the first time use of abbreviation, complete name should be written.
Reply: The lack is corrected!
- In general, the introduction is briefly described while, in title, next-generation sequencing is entitled and nothing is written about this important part of study. It is highly recommended to add some details about the latest research regarding NGS.
Reply: A paragraph concerning NGS was inserted.
- Could you please explain why in table 2, the difference between total base pairs and base pairs after QC is high and relatively significant?
Reply: Modern sequencing technologies can generate a massive number of sequence reads in a single experiment. However, sequencing generated different types and amounts of errors. Therefore, it is necessary to understand, identify and exclude error-types that may impact the interpretation of the downstream analysis. Sequence quality control is therefore an essential first step in your analysis. The number of reads mapped to a unique position or unmapped reads, which are significant with respect to the quality of the input data.
Finally, the English was checked and corrected.
