Dear Dr. Zhou et al.,

thank you for submitting your answers to the reviewer's comments. Reviewer 1 suggested minor, Reviewer 2 suggested major revisions. I agree with Reviewer 2 that major revisions are necessary to improve the quality of the manuscript to reach BG standards. Please follow carefully the reviewer's comments in your revision. Once your revised manuscript is re-submitted, we will send it back to for another round of review.

With kind regards
Tina Treude

Dear Dr. Zhou and Co-Workers,

the reviewer finds that you have appropriately addressed his/her concerns but suggest some minor language edits and recommends to improve the English language.

Do you maybe have a native speaker who could read the manuscript? Otherwise I believe we can offer copy-editor services through BG, but I fear there will be a charge.

Please be invited to submit your revised manuscript.

With kind regards
Tina Treude

Dear Dr. Zhou and Coworkers,
your manuscript is now acceptable for publications subject to minor technical adaptations:

- Please provide full name of the abbreviation LEfSe in the abstract.
- I assume Tax4Fun is the name of a software. Please indicate so in the abstract (e.g. write "Using the software Tax4Fun for functional profiling indicated...").

Comment for BG editorial: I believe the references in the supplementary should come after the text (not in-between tables), correct?

Best
Tina Treude