The Role of the γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) in Plant Salt Stress Tolerance
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of the manuscript written by Dabrovolski and Isayenkov “The role of the γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) in plant salt stress tolerance”. The manuscript is interesting. It contains a lot of important information and is a good overview of publications on the role of GABA in plants under salt stress.
However, I have comments on editing issues. The manuscript contains numerous errors, including too many or too few parentheses, commas, semicolons, etc. It requires authors to read it carefully and correct these sloppy errors before sending it to reviewers.
The second chapter is written very laconically. It only contains figure 2. This figure should be described better/more extensively in the text.
The third chapter, its title is subject to change - contains errors.
Similarly, the title of chapter 5.3 should be changed in my opinion.
No reference in the text to Figures 3, 4 and 5.
Author Response
Dear Editor and Reviewers,
We greatly appreciate your critical evaluation of our manuscript and helpful comments. Our reply to your comments would be provided point by point, where “A” stands for “Authors”, and “L” for “Lines”, where changes have been implemented. The language of the entire manuscript has been checked and corrected.
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Review of the manuscript written by Dabrovolski and Isayenkov “The role of the γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) in plant salt stress tolerance”. The manuscript is interesting. It contains a lot of important information and is a good overview of publications on the role of GABA in plants under salt stress.
However, I have comments on editing issues. The manuscript contains numerous errors, including too many or too few parentheses, commas, semicolons, etc. It requires authors to read it carefully and correct these sloppy errors before sending it to reviewers.
A: Thank you very much for your comment. Some “extra” punctuation marks may appear when a Latin name and abbreviation were introduced. The entire manuscript was re-checked and corrected where necessary.
The second chapter is written very laconically. It only contains figure 2. This figure should be described better/more extensively in the text.
A: The 2nd chapter was further expanded. Please, see L 132-141.
The third chapter, its title is subject to change - contains errors.
A: Thank you for your suggestion, the title was modified. (L143)
Similarly, the title of chapter 5.3 should be changed in my opinion.
A: Thank you for your suggestion, the title was modified. (L456)
No reference in the text to Figures 3, 4 and 5.
A: Thank you for your suggestion, the references were added.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Review
This review article is introduced about the role of the γ-aminobutyric acid in plant against salt-stress tolerance. This review article focuses on the recent achievements in deciphering the role of genetic manipulations to modulate endogenous GABA levels and the exogenous application of GABA and associated metabolites to improve salt stress tolerance. This article provides a good summary of the role of GABA.
1. English and English Grammar should be corrected by native speaker. Because there are many minor mistakes, carefully correct them in this article.
2. Lines 65-67: The role of GABA in the brain and association diseases have been extensively reviewed and will be omitted from this manuscript [12,13].: The meaning of the second half is unclear. Dose “This manuscript” mean “References 12 and 13”? Please re-write this parts.
3. “Section 2. GABA homeostasis in plant”: This section just summarized about metabolic pathway of GABA. Please write opinion of authors.
4. Lines 282-283: Therefore, a thorough understanding of a metabolic network and its response to salinity is required for the successful implementation of GABA-based principles and methods in plant breeding. : Why do authors feel this way? Please explain in detail why.
5. Lines 549-554 (6 lines): There is long sentence. The meaning of his sentence is difficult to understand. Please rewrite this sentence.
6. From line 555: Future efforts toward understanding and comparison of the metabolites flux and networks analysis on different organs, multi-tissue and multi-cell levels will provide important data to create reliable computational models of the effects of the salt stress on plants growth and development and more likely to facilitate the improvement of crops yield and it's quality.:
Authors are writing many kinds of possibility. Which one is more effective to understand it? Please state clearly.
Author Response
The paper entitled: "The role of the γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) in plant salt stress tolerance", falls pefectly within the scope of the journal 'Horticulturae'. The paper is well-structured, and well-written, however, some minor details are needed to be considered in the revised version of the manuscript.
* an introduction of the work is mandatory, where the authors must state clearly the objectives of the work
A: The main objectives of this work were further modified, please, see L 81-85.
* How authors explain the enhancement of energy consumption and the increase of toxins output, in salinity conditions?
A: Those mechanisms were explained in the Introduction section, please, see L39-53. There were many attempts to quantify the energy cost of salt stress tolerance (please, see for example this excellent paper: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.15864). However, while in the Phytotron/greenhouse condition the salt stress could be well-simulated, in the field conditions it often coincides with other abiotic (drought, heat, and so on) and biotic stresses, which makes precise energy counting nearly impossible.
* Adding a figure of the modulation of phytohormones cross-talk in salinity conditions is important to graphically represent all the interferred components.
A: Additional figure was added (please, see figure 5 in the revised version).
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper entitled: "The role of the γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) in plant salt stress tolerance", falls pefectly within the scope of the journal 'Horticulturae'. The paper is well-structured, and well-written, however, some minor details are needed to be considered in the revised version of the manuscript.
* an introduction of the work is mandatory, where the authors must state clearly the objectives of the work
* How authors explain the enhancement of energy consumption and the increase of toxins output, in salinity conditions?
* Adding a figure of the modulation of phytohormones cross-talk in salinity conditions is important to graphically represent all the interferred components.
Author Response
In this study, the authors reviewed the diverse roles of GABA in plant salt stress tolerance which include effects of exogenous application of GABA, genetic manipulation of endogenous level, biosynthesis and metabolism, GABA mediated regulation of homeostasis and physiological functions, etc. They covered a quite decent amount of information related to GABA with figures when necessary and cited relevant articles. While there are similar type of review articles on GABA, I think this can still be a worthy addition to the field.
I appreciate that they have included relevant figures representing the pathways, however, most of them are overwhelming to follow. I suggest they include simplified versions of the figures (showing the rate limiting steps only) on the side in case someone is interested in quickly knowing the overall mechanisms rather than all the details. That would draw even broader audience.
A: We wish to thank you for your valuable opinion. However, we believe that simplifying the figure could lead to a loss of quality and interest of specialists in this area. Therefore we have decided to keep an original picture in the text, however, we have made the simple version of figure 1 as a supplementary figure 1 according to the reviewer’s suggestion.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
In this study, the authors reviewed the diverse roles of GABA in plant salt stress tolerance which include effects of exogenous application of GABA, genetic manipulation of endogenous level, biosynthesis and metabolism, GABA mediated regulation of homeostasis and physiological functions, etc. They covered a quite decent amount of information related to GABA with figures when necessary and cited relevant articles. While there are similar type of review articles on GABA, I think this can still be a worthy addition to the field.
I appreciate that they have included relevant figures representing the pathways, however, most of them are overwhelming to follow. I suggest they include simplified versions of the figures (showing the rate limiting steps only) on the side in case someone is interested in quickly knowing the overall mechanisms rather than all the details. That would draw even broader audience.
Author Response
In this study, the authors reviewed the diverse roles of GABA in plant salt stress tolerance which include effects of exogenous application of GABA, genetic manipulation of endogenous level, biosynthesis and metabolism, GABA mediated regulation of homeostasis and physiological functions, etc. They covered a quite decent amount of information related to GABA with figures when necessary and cited relevant articles. While there are similar type of review articles on GABA, I think this can still be a worthy addition to the field.
I appreciate that they have included relevant figures representing the pathways, however, most of them are overwhelming to follow. I suggest they include simplified versions of the figures (showing the rate limiting steps only) on the side in case someone is interested in quickly knowing the overall mechanisms rather than all the details. That would draw even broader audience.
A: We wish to thank you for your valuable opinion. However, we believe that simplifying the figure could lead to a loss of quality and interest of specialists in this area. Therefore we have decided to keep an original picture in the text, however, we have made the simple version of figure 1 as a supplementary figure 1 according to the reviewer’s suggestion.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
