Anti-Influenza Virus Potential of Probiotic Strain Lactoplantibacillus plantarum YML015 Isolated from Korean Fermented Vegetable

This paper shows good work all sections are well described except the discussion part is very poor, all figures and tables should be more clarified.

Response

The authors should show at least the basis of selection of this strain based on table or figure data for the best obtained isolates amongst the 1200 obtained, (best screening data on numerical values even as the supplementary files)

We have isolated around 1200 bacterial isolates, and we did preliminary screening (anti-viral activity) of few promising bacterial strains isolated form Kimchi and we choose L. planatrum (YML015) (data not shown)

L30

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Change to observed    ˃ to observe

Changed as suggested

L54

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Change but also ˃ beside

Changed as suggested

L57

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Correct consist to consisted

Changed as suggested

L60

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Correct lactobacillus

Changed as suggested

L70-72

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Rephrase  to be clear

We have deleted complex phrase in the sentence and made it simpler and clearer.

“Based on two specific proteins called hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), there are different subtypes of influenza viruses”

L72

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Correct influenza

influenza is changed to Influenza

L96, L111

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Correct Lactobacillus plantarum format

Font changed to italic

L127

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Correct product

The font P of Product has been changed to lowercase.

L145

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Replace was by were

Was is replaced with were

L154, l235, L243

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Correct oc

The °c (degree centigrade) were not uniform throughout the manuscript. We have now made it uniform “°C”

L180

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Correct to [36] and add the authors name before reference number

We have not added “Maragkoudakis et al., 2009” before reference [36]

L195-196

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Rephrase to be understandable

We have now rephrase to ”Briefly, media from tissue culture flasks were collected and centrifuged at 1500 rpm for 5 minutes” by changing “TC-75cm2” to “tissue culture”

L221

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Incubated

The word grown is replaced with incubated

L231

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Correct by 41

We have not corrected as “by Reed and Muench 1938”

L288

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Correct to (…. , the isolated bacterial…)

Corrected as suggested

Figure 2

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All scientific names should be italic font , correct this figure

Corrected as suggested

L307

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Show the color obtained for esculine

We observed the colour changes to yellow

L309

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API 50 CHL kit

Corrected as suggested

Table 1

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Correct all L and d format to be small caps, and correct the table heading not to be active ingredient, in the footnote, what does it mean by present and absent. Please rephrase

Corrected as suggested

Table 2

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Is unclear, please reconstruct, Illustrate the numbers meaning, beside there is no green color in the table, what does it mean by yellow color and blue ? what is it s significance to the reader??? clarify

Corrected as suggested

Figure 3

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Please enhance this figure, provide high resolution pictures, I couldn’t distinguish colors or clear zone in this fig, can be moved to supplementary after providing high resolution /clear images

Corrected as suggested

L356

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what does it mean by plantarum yml015 concentration? Which concentration??

L plantarum YMl015 concentration means the concentration of the culture medium. After centrifuge we have collected the supernatant and used 1x, 10x 7 20x fold of concentration to check the effect.

Fig. 5

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Provide high resolution photos, all are unclear and correct the order, explain the colors and blacking in fig.d

Corrected as suggested

             Table 4 A and B

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Please change to 4 and 5 and reconstruct these tables to be more clear, no need for much abbreviations in the tables, provide full description in columns to clarify the tables as much as possible

Corrected as suggested

Table 5

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What is CM, not described in the footnote? ; correct 10fold;

Please show the survival ration in percentage for more clear data

CM= Cell Mass, Revised accordingly

Discussion

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Don’t start sentence with numbers of references please see L422   [45,46] observed……, L476   same please rephrase; gram should be corrected to Gram

We have now edited those section in a way not to start sentence with number of references. For both [45,46] and L476.

gram is changed to Gram.  

Discussion

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The discussion part is very week, just as repetition of the result descriptions without explaining or in-depth discussion. This section should be completely rephrased to be in depth and to explain results obtained in this study

This section has been revised accordingly.

L453

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Explain the reasons?

We experienced that probiotic strain Lactobacillus plantarum YML015 was found very sensitive to clinically essential antibiotics, therefore it is very safe for human consumption as a Probiotics.

References

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The authors are advised to go through all references and check for several errors  in scientific names formatting (see for example ref. 13, 36, 37…etc and errors in journal names as the first letter should be capitalized ( see for example ref. 3,6,13,14,16,17,18,19,22,23,24,25,27,28,30,36,37,41,48,50,51,….etc

All the suggestion has been implemented.