Dear Ralf and Co-Workers,

thank you for submitting your responses to the reviewers. As you can see one reviewer suggested major, the other one minor revisions. Both requested clarification of the methods as well as some other revisions. Given your responses I feel confident that you will be able to address all of them adequately. I also agree with you on the novelty of the data.

Please be invited to upload your revised manuscript. I will send it back to the reviewer who requested major revision for a second look.

Cheers & Merry X-Mas
Tina

Dear Ralf and Co-Workers,

the reviewer is very pleased with the revision and suggests acceptance of the manuscript. I agree with this suggestion. However, in a personal statement the reviewer pointed to me that the following relevant citations seem to be missing:

Nüsslein et al. 2001 (Environmental Microbiology 3(7), 460–470)
Beulig et al. 2018 (ISME Journal (2019) 13:250–262)
Beulig et al. 2018 (PNAS vol. 115 | no. 2 | 367–372)

All three studies already documented that methyl-C of the 14C-labelled acetate is oxidized to CO2 rather than reduced to CH4. It would therefore be appropriate to give credit to these studies. I agree and suggest to place the respective citations at appropriate locations either in your introduction or discussion.

Let me know in case you have any questions.
Best
Tina