On 2017 Sep 21, Thomas Jové commented:

I would like to warn anyone who could be concerned by the appealing title of this paper. There is no serious evidence of an integron integrase activity in this paper. First, there is no description of the used recombination activity assays (authors refer to previous papers) which turns the paper very difficult to follow. For instance, there is no description of the plasmid content. There is a critical absence of control since Table 4 display "excision efficacy" for every assays (no control in absence of integron, absence of integrase, etc). Then, the efficacy of excision (actually, frequency of excision) is determined as being the ratio of negative or positive PCR (this is also unclear) after transformation of several unexplained plasmid in a Streptococcus strain. Therefore the resulting % most probably reflect the efficiency of PCR rather than the % of excision/integration of GC. A very important point not investigated here (no control) is that is remains unsilved whether the recombination of GC is due to the IntI1 activity or IntI-independant recombination. It is noteworthy to mention that authors did not sequence any PCR product to check the specificty of amplifications. Lastly, there are some very significant signs this paper has not been properly reviewed: (i) The paper contains spelling mistakes in the name of bacteria. (ii) The paper has many wrong claims like the Figure 1 (Structure of integron) in which attC are separated from gene cassette of being part of them. Anyone in the integron field knowns that contrariliy to what is written in the Table 1 the G/TTRRRY does not suffice to determine an attC site. Class 1 integron are not associated to Tn7 but Tn21 transposons (L71), a basic in the integron field. (iii) It is very surprising to have not a single quote of any of the numerous papers from D. Mazel team that is the team leading the field of integron recombinations (iv) The paper was received the 7/09, revised (after reviewing?) the 13/09 and accepted the 14/09 which is far to fast to be honest.

I would really appreciate Pubmed to reconsider the indexation of such papers, and maybe of this journal in which such papers are regular (at least in my fields).

On 2017 Sep 21, Thomas Jové commented:

I would like to warn anyone who could be concerned by the appealing title of this paper. There is no serious evidence of an integron integrase activity in this paper. First, there is no description of the used recombination activity assays (authors refer to previous papers) which turns the paper very difficult to follow. For instance, there is no description of the plasmid content. There is a critical absence of control since Table 4 display "excision efficacy" for every assays (no control in absence of integron, absence of integrase, etc). Then, the efficacy of excision (actually, frequency of excision) is determined as being the ratio of negative or positive PCR (this is also unclear) after transformation of several unexplained plasmid in a Streptococcus strain. Therefore the resulting % most probably reflect the efficiency of PCR rather than the % of excision/integration of GC. A very important point not investigated here (no control) is that is remains unsilved whether the recombination of GC is due to the IntI1 activity or IntI-independant recombination. It is noteworthy to mention that authors did not sequence any PCR product to check the specificty of amplifications. Lastly, there are some very significant signs this paper has not been properly reviewed: (i) The paper contains spelling mistakes in the name of bacteria. (ii) The paper has many wrong claims like the Figure 1 (Structure of integron) in which attC are separated from gene cassette of being part of them. Anyone in the integron field knowns that contrariliy to what is written in the Table 1 the G/TTRRRY does not suffice to determine an attC site. Class 1 integron are not associated to Tn7 but Tn21 transposons (L71), a basic in the integron field. (iii) It is very surprising to have not a single quote of any of the numerous papers from D. Mazel team that is the team leading the field of integron recombinations (iv) The paper was received the 7/09, revised (after reviewing?) the 13/09 and accepted the 14/09 which is far to fast to be honest.

I would really appreciate Pubmed to reconsider the indexation of such papers, and maybe of this journal in which such papers are regular (at least in my fields).