Seaweeds as Source of Bioactive Substances and Skin Care Therapy—Cosmeceuticals, Algotheraphy, and Thalassotherapy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I think it's a very good review.

It could improve with the following indications:

Change the title to: Seaweeds as source of bioactive substances and skin care therapy.

Subtitle: Cosmeceuticals, algotheraphy and thalassotherapy.

Make the abstract again, in which the aim and methodology of the work must be summarized. You must also put some results and finish with a brief conclusion.

P. 49. Improve the taxonomic concept of algae. The algae are not plants, they are an ecological concept: photosynthetic organisms, micro and macroscopic. linked to aquatic life. The macroscopic algae belong to three large groups: red algae (Rodophyta), brown algae (Ocrhophyta) and green algae (Chhorophyta). You can include in this section a further reference: Cosmetics, 2008 5 (53), 50. The use of plants in skin care, cosmetics and fragrances ....

Question: have the names of the species been verified correctly, for example, using the Catagogue of Life database?

P. 81. Change the order: a) red; b) brown, c) green.

Table 1. Put, next to Phaeophyceae, the word Ocrhophyta

Author Response

Thanks to the reviewer for the comments and suggestions for correction. I then indicate in the order of the questions / suggestions of the reviewer:

1- I have changed the title of the manuscript to the title suggested by the reviewer.

2- Since it is a "revision", the abstract does not have the methodologies used, but rather a summary of the introduction and the content. I tried to improve the final part of the summary, especially  of the main conclusions.

3- With regard to the taxonomy of algae, I must mention that I am a phycologist and editor in chief of the Portuguese Seaweeds Website (http://macoi.ci.uc.pt/), an associate of the Global Biodiversity Information – GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/), and I am a European Algae Taxonomy authority.Thus, I reassert that red and green algae are plants, because in the current classification system, the phylum Rhodophyta (red algae) and the phylum Chlorophyta (green algae) belong to the Eukarya (or Eukaryota) domain and to the Plantae Kingdom. Reference has been added to the paper Cosmetics, 2008 5 (53), 50...

4- All names used in this manuscript are taxonomically valid names

5- In Table 1 was added the  name of the brown algae phylum (Ochrophyta)

Reviewer 2 Report

This study is well documented and supported by 304 references.

1. Please mention Figure 1 in the paper text.

2. In order to respect and keep the references numbering, the mention of Table 1 should be moved after ..... cosmetic industry along with the indication of references from 20 to133 (Line 92).

See below:

"Due to the chemical diversity and unique properties, algae have been the subject of many
92 studies and are widely used in the cosmetics industry (Table 1) [20-133]".

3. The reference [134] is kept after .....other bioactive agents (Line 100).

4. Minor English revision should be performed.  

Author Response

Thanks to the reviewer for the comments and suggestions for correction. I then indicate in the order of the questions / suggestions of the reviewer:

1- Added mention of Figure 1 in the text.

2-The phrase suggested by the reviewer regarding Table 1 was added to the text.

3- The position of ref [134] was changed to the position indicated by the reviewer.

4- The English was revised

Reviewer 3 Report

This is very good comprehensive review paper about marine seaweeds. However, in reality there are problems using seaweeds extracts in cosmetics. For examples, salts (Nacl) should be removed completely and this is not easy work, requires lots of energy and money.  Furthermore, some seaweeds are in deep sea and difficult to collect large sum to use commercial cosmetics.

Author Response

I understand the concern expressed by the reviewer, but in fact marine algae have been used in the cosmetic industry for some time, and the elimination of NaCl is a relatively easy task to perform, since this mineral (although it is found in the composition of the algae itself ), is found mainly on the surface of the thalli, being very easy to wash the thalli with fresh water, with a complete elimination of NaCl

Reviewer 4 Report

This review is well-covered the materials from seaweed. Sources, properties, and applications of materials are well-summarized. Representative structures of materials also disclosed and literatures are well-cited. Therefore, this review is acceptable to be published in Cosmetics after revision of Figure 3.

In Figure 3, C-O bonds do not fit to oxygens. Especially, the structure of Xi-carrageenan is broken.

Author Response

Thanks to the reviewer for the comments and suggestions for correction. I then indicate in the order of the questions / suggestions of the reviewer

Figure 3 was duly corrected