Latest preprint reviews

1. Regulation of lung cancer initiation and progression by the stem cell determinant Musashi

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Alison G Barber
   2. Cynthia M Quintero
   3. Michael Hamilton
   4. Nirakar Rajbhandari
   5. Roman Sasik
   6. Yan Zhang
   7. Carla Kim
   8. Hatim Husain
   9. Xin Sun
   10. Tannishtha Reya

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study shows a significant role for Mushashi-2 (Msi2) in lung adenocarcinoma. The authors provided solid data that support the requirement for Msi2 in tumor growth and progression, although the study would have been strengthened by including more patient samples and additional evidence regarding Msi2+ cells being more responsive to transformation. These findings are of interest to both the lung cancer and the RNA binding protein fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Robust variability of grid cell properties within individual grid modules enhances encoding of local space

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. William T. Redman
   2. Santiago Acosta-Mendoza
   3. Xue-Xin Wei
   4. Michael J. Goard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study characterizes the variability in spacing and direction of entorhinal grid cells and shows how this variability can be useful to disambiguate locations within an environment. These claims are supported by solid evidence, yet some aspects of the methodology should be clarified. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists working on spatial navigation and, more generally, on neural coding.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A General Mechanism for the General Stress Response in Bacteria

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Rishika Baral
   2. Kristin Ho
   3. Ramasamy P. Kumar
   4. Jesse B. Hopkins
   5. Maxwell B. Watkins
   6. Salvatore LaRussa
   7. Suhaily Caban-Penix
   8. Logan A. Calderone
   9. Niels Bradshaw

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study combines genetic analysis, biochemistry, and structural modeling to reveal new insights into how changes in protein-protein structure activate signal transduction as part of the bacterial general stress response. The data, collected using validated and standard methods, and the interpretations are solid, although additional experimental structural evidence would strengthen the proposed model and its potential application to other systems. This manuscript, which provides multiple avenues for follow-up studies, will be of broad interest to microbiologists, structural biologists, and cell biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. CUTS RNA Biosensor for the Real-Time Detection of TDP-43 Loss-of-Function

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Longxin Xie
   2. Jessica Merjane
   3. Cristian A Bergmann
   4. Jiazhen Xu
   5. Bryan Hurtle
   6. Christopher J Donnelly

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Recent studies have demonstrated that depletion of nuclear TDP-43 leads to loss of its nuclear function resulting in changes in gene expression and splicing of target mRNAs. This study developed a sensitive and robust sensor for TDP-43 activity that should impact the field's ability to monitor whether TDP-43 is functional or not. Though limited to cell culture, the evidence presented is convincing and is the first demonstration that a GFP on/off system can be used to assess TDP-43 mutants as well as loss of soluble TDP-43. The findings are valuable and may represent a novel tool to investigate TDP-43-associated disease mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Multi-tissue network analysis reveals the effect of JNK inhibition on dietary sucrose-induced metabolic dysfunction in rats

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Hong Yang
   2. Cheng Zhang
   3. Woonghee Kim
   4. Mengnan Shi
   5. Metin Kiliclioglu
   6. Cemil Bayram
   7. Ismail Bolat
   8. Özlem Özdemir Tozlu
   9. Cem Baba
   10. Nursena Yuksel
   11. Serkan Yildirim
   12. Shazia Iqbal
   13. Jihad Sebhaoui
   14. Ahmet Hacımuftuoglu
   15. Mathias Uhlen
   16. Jan Boren
   17. Hasan Turkez
   18. Adil Mardinoglu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The authors present a valuable study exploring the interaction between JNK signaling and high sucrose feeding. The strength of evidence supporting these observations is solid, including multi-tissue transcriptomic and metabolic analyses, followed by network modeling approaches to define the organs and pathways involved. Reviewers provided several suggestions to improve the manuscript including clarifications of model and analyses, as well as explanations for within-group variations and confirming RNA-seq results at the level of metabolite processes highlighted.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Isobaric crosslinking mass spectrometry technology for studying conformational and structural changes in proteins and complexes

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Jie Luo
   2. Jeff Ranish

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This manuscript presents a valuable new quantitative crosslinking mass spectrometry approach using novel isobaric crosslinkers. The data are solid and the method has potential for a broad application in structural biology if more isobaric crosslinking channels are available and the quantitative information of the approach is exploited in more depth.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Aberrant FGF signaling promotes granule neuron precursor expansion in SHH subgroup infantile medulloblastoma

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Odessa R. Yabut
   2. Hector Gomez
   3. Jessica Arela
   4. Jesse Garcia Castillo
   5. Thomas Ngo
   6. Samuel J. Pleasure

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study provides potentially highly valuable new insight into the role of Fgf signalling in SUFU mutation-linked cerebellar tumors and indicates novel therapeutic interventions via inhibition of Fgf signalling. The evidence supporting the major claims, however, is at this point currently incomplete. A more robust analysis of gene expression patterns and deeper mechanistic insight would significantly enhance this study, which could have wide-ranging implications for the treatment of specific cerebellar tumors.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Preeclampsia-specific immune cell network in placenta revealed by Cytometry by time of flight and single-cell RNA-seq

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Haiyi Fei
   2. Xiaowen Lu
   3. Zhan Shi
   4. Xiu Liu
   5. Cuiyu Yang
   6. Xiaohong Zhu
   7. Yuhan Lin
   8. Ziqun Jiang
   9. Jianmin Wang
   10. Dong Huang
   11. Liu Liu
   12. Songying Zhang
   13. Lingling Jiang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study investigates the immune system's role in pre-eclampsia. The authors map the immune cell landscape of the human placenta and find an increase in macrophages and Th17 cells in patients with pre-eclampsia. Following mouse studies, the authors suggest that the IGF1-IGF1R pathway might play a role in how macrophages influence T cells, potentially driving the pathology of pre-eclampsia. There is solid evidence in this study that will be of interest to immunologists and developmental biologists, however, some of the conclusions require additional detail and/or more appropriate statistical tests.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Contraction-induced endocardial id2b plays a dual role in regulating myocardial contractility and valve formation

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Shuo Chen
   2. Jie Yin
   3. Jinxiu Liang
   4. Weijia Zhang
   5. Peijun Jiang
   6. Wenyuan Wang
   7. Xiaoying Chen
   8. Yuanhong Zhou
   9. Peng Xia
   10. Fan Yang
   11. Ying Gu
   12. Ruilin Zhang
   13. Peidong Han

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important work advances our understanding of how mechanical forces transmitted by blood flow contribute to cardiac development by identifying id2b as a flow-responsive factor that is required for valve development and calcium-mediated cardiac contractility and its downstream mechanism of action. However, the evidence supporting the conclusions is incomplete and would benefit from more rigorous approaches. With additional support of the main conclusions, the work will be of interest to those working on developmental biology, heart development, and congenital heart disease.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Effective population size does not explain long-term variation in genome size and transposable element content in animals

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Alba Marino
    2. Gautier Debaecker
    3. Anna-Sophie Fiston-Lavier
    4. Annabelle Haudry
    5. Benoit Nabholz

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      This important study offers a powerful empirical test of a highly influential hypothesis in population genetics. It incorporates a large number of animal genomes spanning a broad phylogenetic spectrum and treats them in a rigorous unified pipeline, providing the convincing negative result that effective population size scales neither with the content of transposable elements nor with overall genome size. These observations demonstrate that there is still no simple, global hypothesis that can explain the observed variation in transposable element content and genome size in animals.

    Reviewed by eLife