The Apicomplexan Parasite Toxoplasma gondii

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a well-organized and reference article on a very important parasite for veterinary and public health. Although, it is well written some minor language issues need a more thorough English language editing eg the plural of sheep is not sheeps!

Regarding the etymology of the word Toxoplasma since the word plasma means creature in Greek language and it is wrong. This is not surprising since the reference is a french one! 

Although the authors are veterinarians the data on the significance of the parasite in Veterinary Medicine are rather limited and could be better illustrated. On the other hand, the figure on the biological cycle is excellent! 

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the time they took revising this manuscript, for their kind remarks, and for the comments they offered in order to improve it. Below we specify how we addressed each comment.

Regarding the comment “This is a well-organized and reference article on a very important parasite for veterinary and public health. Although, it is well written some minor language issues need a more thorough English language editing eg the plural of sheep is not sheeps!”, the word “sheeps” was corrected to “sheep” (line 166). Additionally, we have carefully gone throughout the manuscript and made ortographic and grammatical corrections were made in order to improve its quality and readability as suggested by the Reviewer.

Regarding the comment “Regarding the etymology of the word Toxoplasma since the word plasma means creature in Greek language and it is wrong. This is not surprising since the reference is a french one!”, The word “plasma” was removed and the sentence in the manuscript now reads “The name of the genus was given as a reference to the shape of the parasite, from the Greek tóxon meaning arc or bow” (line 38). This entirely agrees with the original proposal by Nicolle and Manceaux (1909), “…nous proposons, pour désigner ce genre nouveau, le nom de Toxoplasma (de τόξον, arc)”. In fact, these authors do not mention the word “plasma”, which, at that time, was already largely in use in French, as well as in English, introduced from Late Latin early in the 18th century.

Regarding the comment “Although the authors are veterinarians the data on the significance of the parasite in Veterinary Medicine are rather limited and could be better illustrated. On the other hand, the figure on the biological cycle is excellent!”, we added additional information in section 2.1 in order to transmit a more complete message to the reader on the significance of T. gondii in Veterinary Medicine (lines 166-172, 189-195).

Reviewer 2 Report

I send my congratulations to the authors, I believe that the article has an adequate structure to know how Toxoplasma gondii works and that the reader can follow it without difficulty.
For my part I have no suggestion to make.

"The authors have compiled a compilation of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Which has a worldwide distribution infecting a vast variety of animals.

It is not clear to me if Figures 2, 4, 5 and 7 have been made by the authors or have been compiled from the literature.

In section 8, the authors have described the expansion and dissemination to the host's tissues through the circulatory system but there is little reference to the strategies followed to avoid transmission or for treatment by this parasite.

Perhaps the authors could talk about treatment in animals or humans.

I believe that the article has been approached in a simple way and that its presentation facilitates having a global vision about T. gondii"

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the time they took revising this manuscript, for their kind remarks, and for the comments they offered in order to improve it. Below we specify how we addressed each comment.

Regarding the comment “It is not clear to me if Figures 2, 4, 5 and 7 have been made by the authors or have been compiled from the literature.”, we added to sentence “All images are originals produced by the authors.” to the Author Contributions section in order to clarify this issue (line 658).

Regarding the comment “In section 8, the authors have described the expansion and dissemination to the host's tissues through the circulatory system but there is little reference to the strategies followed to avoid transmission or for treatment by this parasite. Perhaps the authors could talk about treatment in animals or humans.”, we added additional information on the treatment and control options (lines 106-111, 151-153, 170-172).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All previous have been corrected by the authors. Thank you

Reviewer 2 Report

The new version of the article “The apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii“ Includes the improvement proposals that were transmitted to the authors. The distribution of the content of the article facilitates the understanding about Toxoplasma gondii, the  prevalence and silence infection of these parasite.

I do not have to add any modification to the new version