General

The authors propose a review of the issues arising in vertebrate genomic studies. This very interesting review covers the major issues faced by any researcher dealing with NGS data acquisition.

Major comments:

None

Minor comments:

The authors focus their results on the genome 10K project only, but the title focus on general vertebrate genomic studies. The authors should either name the G10K project in the title, or, even better, try to be more general in their review. This may encourage the ordinary researcher dealing with one genome or one transcriptome (and not thousands) to follow all the important steps and procedures in article.

P11l8: Clarify this sentence. Red blood cells are non-nucleated in mammals but nucleated in birds, reptiles and amphibians.

P18l23: merge the paragraph p7l17 with this one also describing DNA barcoding.

P19l5: The authors should add a short note on RNA quality assessment (agarose Gel electrophoresis, RNA bioanalyzer, spectrophotometer…) to assess quantity, purity and absence of degradation.

Discretionary comments:

Why not extending these guidelines to animal genomics? Invertebrates require the same stars/quality procedure. Sampling, permits, and transport issues are fairly the same than with vertebrates, nevertheless ethic issues may differ. Species determination for invertebrates may also cause problems so barcoding, identification by a taxonomist and archiving (freezing, ethanol,…) shells, exoskeletons, insect wings or any body part that may be useful for further identification is also required.

P17l24: Company names for couriers do not seem relevant here.

P18l6-7: I don’t understand this statement. Please clarify the sentence.

Level of interest: An article of importance in its field

Quality of written English: Acceptable

Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.

Declaration of competing interests: No competing interests