The Chicken Egg: An Advanced Material for Tissue Engineering

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

- make an abstract graphic to show the novelty of this article

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the suggestion. Please kindly find the attached graphical abstract showing the novelty of this article. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.png

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

The manuscript titled “The Chicken Egg: An Advanced Material for Tissue Engineering” by Zhang, Y.; et al. is a Review work where the authors outlined the most recent advances in the field of the development of tissue engineering platforms based on chicken egg proteins remarking their promising future avenues. The manuscript is generally well-written and this is a topic of growing interest.

However, it exists some points that need to be addressed (please, see them below detailed point-by-point) to improve the scientifc quality of the submitted manuscript paper before this article will be consider for its publication in Biomolecules.

1) KEYWORDS. The authors should consider to add the term “tissue engineering” in the keyword list.

2) INTRODUCTION. This section clearly depicts the state-of-the art of the examined field. “The scaffold should ideally mimic the specific native tissue microenvironment (…) reorganization, and survivability” (lines 39-42). Here, it may be opportune to highlight the important role of the local mechanical properties [1] of egg white hydrogel scaffolds to enhance their biocompatibility which is crucial to be considered as suitable candidate for human implants [2].

[1] Magazzù, A.; et al. Investigation of Soft Matter Nanomechanics by Atomic Force Microscopy and Optical Tweezers: A Comprehensive Review. Nanomaterials 2023, 13, 963. https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13060963.

[2] Wei, Z.Z.; et al. A mechanically robust egg white hydrogel scaffold with excellent biocompatibility by three-step green processing. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 2022, 65, 1599-1612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-022-2039-2.

3) ADVANCED BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS OF EGG MATERIALS. “Adding NAOH (…)” (line 322). Please, the authors should define the full-name of all the chemical compounds. Then, the abbreviations should be placed between brackets. This comment should be taken into account for the main manuscript body text.

4) “In direct ink writing, a bio-ink (…) through the nozzle” (lines 325-327). Here, it may be convenient to state the potential drawbacks and limitations of inket printing as the appearance of satellite droplets and nozzle clogging. A short statement should be added in this regard to discuss this point and how to minimize both non-desirable effects.

5) Then, what is the opinion of the authors about the possibility of transgenesis to increase the yield and quality of egg-white protein? Some discussion should be furnished about this point.

6) CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE REMARKS. This section perfectly remarks the most relevant outcomes found by the authors in this field and also the future line actions to pursue this research. No actions are requested from the authors.

The manuscript is generally well-written. However, it may be advisable if the authors could recheck it in order to polish those final details susceptible to be improved.

Author Response

Thank you. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewers comments: It is still difficult to find the novelty of the work concerning what has already been published. What is the difference between what is published with what the authors want to publish? It is not clear. The authors must describe these differences in the introduction section.

 Reviewer comments: The number of new publications in the field is high and growing day-by-day. But it is also true that the number of (good) reviews in the area are equally increasing. Hence, I believe new reviews should be focused on the recent advances while making use of the efforts from previous reviews to substantiate the knowledge in the field.

Reviewers comments: The number of references used in the discussion of the state of the art and advances is very low (58 references). The authors need to do a more exhaustive search of the literature for the most important advances in the topic of interest. The authors need to discuss more literature. 

Reviewers comments: The title must be modified since the review is focus to tissue engineering applications.

Reviewers comments: How Egg can be used to produce materials? It is not clear. The authors must add a section with this information.

Author Response

Please see the attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article does not deserve to be published in the journal Biomolecules for these reasons:

Length of the Article: The article is considerably long at 13 pages for a review article. We suggest a more concise representation of the content to make it more accessible to our readers.

References and Citations: I noticed that there are a limited number of citations in the article. A comprehensive review typically requires a broader and more in-depth investigation into the existing literature. This would enhance the credibility and thoroughness of your article.

Novelty: While the chicken egg is indeed an interesting topic of study in the realm of biomedical engineering, the abstract doesn't strongly convey what new insights or perspectives your review brings to the field. Consider emphasizing the unique contributions of your review compared to existing literature.

Scope: The abstract mentions a wide range of applications, from biomimetic films to degradable microstructures for microfluidics. It may be more impactful to narrow down the focus to a few key areas and delve deeper into those, rather than trying to cover so many topics in one review.

Author Response

Thank you