论文审稿意见遇到棘手问题，请教大家。

我在饲养动物的时候每组用了10只大鼠，但是在进行粪便16s和代谢组检测的时候，每组只送了6个平行样（再多平行样真是太贵了，测不起了），所以检测结果只有6个数据点。被审稿人发现了这个问题，想请教有动物实验经验的大神们，该如何回答这个问题。
“A total of 10 rats are included in each treatment group, but for some data (e.g. metabolomics, 16s RNA sequencing data) it is evident that only results from 6 rats are presented. This has to be clarified. Sampling description states sampling from all rats (line 133), so why are metabolomics data only from 6 rats?”