The paper is from the plant journal. It is about RSL1 E3 ligase targets ABA receptors in Arabidopsis. The plant journal is a good journal in plant science. But I found that there are no control in some experiments performed in this paper. This is a severe problems. So I doubt that the authors may had done the experiments with appropriate control but they didn't present their control results for some reasons.
Is this situation possible? acceptable? If this is not acceptable, how could this paper successfully went through so many checkpoints (the author's boss, graduate degree interview and the editors of the plant journal) and be published on a good journal?
I won't comment on their paper directly, but different reviewers will have differing levels of expertise and differing levels of concern. One may be strict on the biochemistry, while another may require the genetics be absolutely correct.
BiFC controls are also a tricky topic. Completely validating an interaction by BiFC may require several controls, such as point mutations that abrogate interaction, competition assays, lack of interaction with an unrelated protein, etc. And each reviewer may prioritize or value these controls differently. We recently developed a single vector BiFC system that significantly reduces the inherent background signal from BiFC fragment reassembly and can be used for BiFC via agroinfiltration, bombardment, or protoplast transformation. Take a look if your interested in BiFC.
DOI: 10.1111/tpj.12639
The article and supplementary methods are also here on ResearchGate.
Article Significant reduction of BiFC non-specific assembly facilita...
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