This manuscript presents results from an experiment where 13C-labelled glucose was added to soil as a pulse and then chased into microbial compartments and CO2 over 50 days. The experiment was novel because it was done under field conditions, and 13C enrichment of amino sugars was determined along with that in lipids and “cytosol.” The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the turnover times of these different components, based on their assimilation of 13C over time.
Although the manuscript presents a novel approach to an important problem in soil microbiology, it suffers from some flaws that need to be corrected before it is acceptable for publication. Two expert reviewers have found numerous issues with the paper, in particular, with the hypotheses and experimental design, which will be challenging to address. The responses to these reviewers submitted by the authors are (barely) adequate to evaluate whether a resubmitted manuscript would eventually become suitable for publication, because they appear to have been hastily written with poor grammar and thus are not always easy to understand.
One additional point that should be emphasized is that three time points is barely adequate for fitting a single-pool exponential decay model; clearly, sampling at more time points would have improved the experiment. Related to this, the discussion of “bi-phasic” glucose decomposition is not very meaningful.
Despite these shortcomings, the authors are invited to incorporate all the reviewers’ suggestions into a completely revised manuscript.

The manuscript has been improved by streamlining the hypotheses and reducing the speculations and assumptions presented in the original version. However, some revisions are still required before the paper can be published. Grammar is still problematic in some sections. See attached pdf for examples of corrections.

Abstract: The abstract should be revised to improve the English and also to make the most important points come across more strongly.
The authors need to reconcile the terminology to be consistent with the methods, particularly related to the concept of “turnover time”.
Line 35: What is meant by "renewal"?

Lines 275-277: what is meant by “per column”? Maybe you mean “per component”?
Lines 304-306 and throughout: Cytosol pool vs cytosolic pool: Be consistent, choose one.
Lines 308-309 and throughout: “recovery in” or “incorporation into”
Lines 373-377: How was the “non-specific pool” of SOM determined?
Lines 481-502: This paragraph is long and rambling and presents some results and calculations in addition to a discussion point. It would benefit the manuscript if the calculations could be put into a supplement and then the main point of the paragraph would be more clear (that amino sugars are slower to incorporate C than the other cell components studied).
Conclusions; This section reads like a lengthy summary of the results. It could be shortened to the main implications of the study.
Figures
Fig. 1: Please indicate what the top brown line indicates; apparently it is the 13C-enriched glucose remaining in the soil?
Fig. 5: Missing?

This version looks great. However, please double-check and proofread all text and captions to ensure all technical details are correct.