Cell Biology

A motor neuron disease-associated mutation produces non-glycosylated Seipin that induces ER stress and apoptosis by inactivating SERCA2b

1. Shunsuke Saito
2. Tokiro Ishikawa
3. Satoshi Ninagawa
4. Tetsuya Okada
5. Kazutoshi Mori

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Seipin is a multifunctional Endoplasmic Reticulum localised protein associated with seemingly unrelated human diseases. Here the authors establish a correlation between the expression of a particular mutant form of Seipin associated in humans with motor neuron disease and altered intracellular calcium dynamics and allied proteotoxic stress. The paper is noted for the clues it provides into how these cellular defects arise and for offering a plausible, but yet unproven hypothesis for the cellular pathology that may account for the human disease phenotype.

Reviewed by eLife

Bacillus thuringiensis toxins divert progenitor cells toward enteroendocrine fate by decreasing cell adhesion with intestinal stem cells in Drosophila

1. Rouba Jneid
2. Rihab Loudhaief
3. Nathalie Zucchini-Pascal
4. Marie-Paule Nawrot-Esposito
5. Arnaud Fichant
6. Raphael Rousset
7. Mathilde Bonis
8. Dani Osman
9. Armel Gallet

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Jneid et al find that an entomopathogenic strain of B. thuringiensis and its Cry1A toxins, which are widely used to combat lepidopteran pests, disrupt intestinal epithelial homeostasis in Drosophila-an insect that is generally considered non-suceptible. They demonstrate that the Cry1A toxins act by altering E-cadherin-based adhesion between intestinal stem cells and their new progeny. The findings carry potential implications for unintended, broad effects of B. thuringiensis in agricultural settings.

Reviewed by eLife

Modular UBE2H-CTLH E2-E3 complexes regulate erythroid maturation

1. Dawafuti Sherpa
2. Judith Mueller
3. Özge Karayel
4. Peng Xu
5. Yu Yao
6. Jakub Chrustowicz
7. Karthik V Gottemukkala
8. Christine Baumann
9. Annette Gross
10. Oliver Czarnecki
11. Wei Zhang
12. Jun Gu
13. Johan Nilvebrant
14. Sachdev S Sidhu
15. Peter J Murray
16. Matthias Mann
17. Mitchell J Weiss
18. Brenda A Schulman
19. Arno F Alpi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This work, which will be of interest to scientists in the field of hematology and ubiquitin biology, identifies previously unrecognized functions and regulatory mechanisms of an E3 ubiquitin ligase during erythrocyte progenitor maintenance and differentiation. This work has the potential to reveal that the exchange of scaffold proteins of a modular E3 ligase can have an effect on cell fate and reveal a novel mechanism of E2 enzyme regulation during differentiation. However, additional work is needed to support the major claims.

Reviewed by eLife

MYC overrides HIF-1α to regulate proliferating primary cell metabolism in hypoxia

1. Courtney A Copeland
2. Benjamin A Olenchock
3. David Ziehr
4. Sarah McGarrity
5. Kevin Leahy
6. Jamey D Young
7. Joseph Loscalzo
8. William M Oldham

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors find a significant and unexpected consequence of hypoxia in lung fibroblasts and smooth muscle cells - decreased lactate production - a finding that is important in the field of pulmonary hypertension. Additional orthogonal assessments of lactate production will strengthen the conclusions put forward.

Reviewed by eLife

Transcriptional drifts associated with environmental changes in endothelial cells

1. Yalda Afshar
2. Feyiang Ma
3. Austin Quach
4. Anhyo Jeong
5. Hannah L Sunshine
6. Vanessa Freitas
7. Yasaman Jami-Alahmadi
8. Raphael Helaers
9. Xinmin Li
10. Matteo Pellegrini
11. James A Wohlschlegel
12. Casey E Romanoski
13. Miikka Vikkula
14. M Luisa Iruela-Arispe

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment’

  This paper is of interest to a broad audience of cell biologists, and researchers who work with cultured endothelial cells. The work uncovers the impact of culture conditions on transcriptional changes of endothelial cells and demonstrates that some of these changes can be recovered by sheer forces or coculture. The authors provide valuable datasets which will be a good resource for the community.

Reviewed by eLife

A role for the centrosome in regulating the rate of neuronal efferocytosis by microglia in vivo

1. Katrin Möller
2. Max Brambach
3. Ambra Villani
4. Elisa Gallo
5. Darren Gilmour
6. Francesca Peri

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This paper is an important contribution to the microglia field and will be of interest to a broad readership in the fields of neurobiology, cell biology and immunology. This work describes fundamental mechanisms of efferocytosis by microglia and uses impressive imaging in zebrafish, in combination with molecular manipulations, to provide compelling data of how centrosome movements synchronize with phagocytic cup formation during microglial efferocytosis of neuronal corpses in vivo.

Reviewed by eLife

Biological condensates form percolated networks with molecular motion properties distinctly different from dilute solutions

1. Zeyu Shen
2. Bowen Jia
3. Yang Xu
4. Jonas Wessén
5. Tanmoy Pal
6. Hue Sun Chan
7. Shengwang Du
8. Mingjie Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The authors report results from experiments and modeling that study the motions of molecules in the dense and dilute phases of biomolecular condensates, with the key finding that molecules in the dense phase of condensates formed by folded domains appear to switch between a confined state with low apparent diffusivity and a mobile state with a high apparent diffusivity that is comparable to that of molecules in the dilute phase. The study provides experimental evidence that is suggestive of phase separation coupled with percolation as the operative mechanism that gives rise to biomolecular condensates.

Reviewed by eLife

Doublecortin and JIP3 are neural-specific counteracting regulators of dynein-mediated retrograde trafficking

1. Xiaoqin Fu
2. Lu Rao
3. Peijun Li
4. Xinglei Liu
5. Qi Wang
6. Alexander I Son
7. Arne Gennerich
8. Judy Shih-Hwa Liu

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In their paper, Rao, Li et al. explore the mechanisms by which the microtubule-associated protein, doublecortin (DCX), functions in regulating retrograde transport in neurons. They find that DCX affects the dynein-microtubule interaction to perturb its motion. Impressively, they reconstitute a dynein-dynactin-JIP3 complex, validating JIP3 as a bona fide adaptor, and show that DCX disrupts the transport of this processive complex. This mechanism will be useful in understanding how mutations in DCX cause lissencephaly and this paper will be of interest to those in the cytoskeletal and neurobiology fields.

Reviewed by eLife

Heterogeneous levels of delta-like 4 within a multinucleated niche cell maintains muscle stem cell diversity

1. Susan Eliazer
2. Xuefeng Sun
3. Emilie Barruet
4. Andrew S Brack

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The premise behind this manuscript is important and timely for muscle biologists and for stem cell biologists. The identification of heterogenous distribution of factors across the myofiber is an important contribution for dissecting how muscle stem cell diversity in a tissue is achieved. However, the mechanism of action proposed by the authors will require additional experimental support.

Reviewed by eLife

Multinucleation resets human macrophages for specialized functions at the expense of their identity

1. Kourosh Ahmadzadeh
2. Marie Pereira
3. Margot Vanoppen
4. Eline Bernaerts
5. Jeong‐Hun Ko
6. Tania Mitera
7. Christy Maksoudian
8. Bella B Manshian
9. Stefaan Soenen
10. Carlos D Rose
11. Graham R Williams
12. J H Duncan Bassett
13. Patrick Matthys
14. Carine Wouters
15. Jacques Behmoaras

Reviewed by Review Commons