A Transcriptomic Analysis of Gene Expression in Chieh-Qua in Response to Fusaric Acid Stress
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript was about transcriptomic analysis of chieh-qua treated with FA.
My concerns are as follows:
- I suggest the authors to polish the language with help of native English speakers or send to polish to language edit companies.
- For fig2, the authors mentioned more cell death occurs in H5 than A39 under FA stress. I ould not tell the difference from the Fig2. I suggest the authors provide quantitative data to support the conclusion.
- For the expression of genes related to ET, since SA is also an important plant hormone in regulating plant disease resistance, I suggest the authors check the expression of genes related to SA the same as you did with ET.
- For Fig 6, 7, the authors need to provide more detail information about the description of statistical analysis for example which is the control to compare.
Author Response
Reviewer 1:
- I suggest the authors to polish the language with help of native English speakers or send to polish to language edit companies.
Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have sent our manuscript to the native English speaker for language polishing, which has been shown in the Revised Manuscript.
- For fig2, the authors mentioned more cell death occurs in H5 than A39 under FA stress. I ould not tell the difference from the Fig2. I suggest the authors provide quantitative data to support the conclusion.
Response: Thank you very much for your question. For the TUNNEL assay, the Green Fluorescence indicates the signal of apoptosis and the Merged represents the combining of PI staining and Green Fluorescence. We could see that there is no green fluorescence in the control. Much more green fluorescences in the H5 (the whole view) could be found than A39 after 2 days FA treatment. Because when we observed the signals, we didn’t precisely record the number of green fluorescences. The following figure is “The analysis number of green fluorescences”. From the figure, we could see that much more green fluorescences in H5 than A39 after FA treatment.
- For the expression of genes related to ET, since SA is also an important plant hormone in regulating plant disease resistance, I suggest the authors check the expression of genes related to SA the same as you did with ET.
Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have searched the SA related genes and just found that one gene (CL11835.Contig2_All) encoding salicylic acid-binding protein was up-regulated after FA treatment. Therefore, we didn’t analyze the SA genes expression alone.
- For Fig 6, 7, the authors need to provide more detail information about the description of statistical analysis for example which is the control to compare.
Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. In the whole manuscript, the DEGs up or down-regulated referred that genes of A39 were up or down regulated compared with that in H5. And in the Figure 6 and 7, we carried out two conditions at normal condition or FA stress, respectively. For example, all the genes encoding ethylene (ET) and pathogen-related protein showed none differences between A39 and H5 at normal condition, while significant higher expression in A39 than H5 were detected after 2 days FA treatment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Chieh-qua (Benincasa hispida Cogn. var. Chieh-qua How) appears to be the only species in the genus Benincasa. It is the native plant to South and Southeast Asia. So, the presented data are important and novel, regarding as well the economic and medical value of this plant.
The fusarium wilt is a worldwide disruptive soil pathogen disease, causing severe problems in the production and quality of many plants among the is chieh-qua.
Due to the restricted area of Chieh-qua distribution, the Scientific Soundness and Interest to readers is more important to South and Southeast Asia. Any, way the methodology of the studies can be applied to many other studies of different fusarium species pathogens to their threat to other plants.
The methodology, results are clearly described and properly discussed using relevant literature.
The conclusions are derived on the basis of obtained results.
So, my Overal Merit of the paper is high.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your suggestions.
