Parasite Research Preprints

Rohit Satyam

This article discusses an interesting vaccine candidate screening approach using a micro-array platform based on the mammalian protein expression system. The authors shortlisted several novel vaccine candidates containing full-length ectodomain.

However, data representation is erroneous and requires improvement. For example, in Figure 2 A, the Patient samples were clustered using hierarchical clustering (Similar issue with Figure 4a). This disrupts the temporal information and given the poor quality of the image, it isn't easy to follow which samples were from which time point. The legend of Figure 2 B is also of poor quality and the overlap of colors makes the interpretation of the results cumbersome.

Finally, Figure 4B is also difficult to interpret as it is visually challenging which bar represents which gene given the small padding between the neighboring bars. Besides tertile information is also important and is missing from this plot.

The following line requires correction where the authors say about the 4th tertile (I guess this is the 2nd tertile since the authors talks about the moderate level of antibody response):

"Based on the overal spread of the data, some of these antigens induced the acquisition of high levels (1st tertile) of antibodies, among which included novel antigens such as PF3D7_1025300, PF3D7_1105800, PF3D7_1334400, PF3D7_0911300, PF3D7_1252300, PF3D7_1460600, PF3D7_1453100, PF3D7_0831400 and some induced low levels of antibodies (3rd tertile) while others induced moderate levels (4th tertile). "