eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Sexual dimorphism in sensorimotor transformation of optic flow

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Sarah Nicholas
   2. Katja Sporar Klinge
   3. Luke Turnbull
   4. Annabel Moran
   5. Aika Young
   6. Yuri Ogawa
   7. Karin Nordström

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Hoverflies are known for their sexually dimorphic visual systems and exquisite flight behaviors. This valuable study reports how two types of visual descending neurons differ between males and females in their motion- and speed-dependent responses, yet surprisingly, the behavior they control lacks any sexual dimorphism. The results convincingly support these findings, which will be of interest for studies of visuomotor transformations and network-level brain organization.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Trehalose metabolism regulates transcriptional control of muscle development in lepidopteran insects

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Sharada Mohite
   2. Tanaji Devkate
   3. Prashant Kalaskar
   4. Prashant Singh
   5. Abhishek Subramanian
   6. Rakesh Shamsunder Joshi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study examines whether the sugar trehalose, coordinates energy supply with the gene programs that build muscle in the cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera). The evidence for this currently is incomplete. The central claim - that trehalose specifically regulates an E2F/Dp-driven myogenic program - is not supported by the specificity of the data: perturbations and sequencing are systemic, alternative explanations such as general energy or amino-acid scarcity remain plausible, and mechanistic anchors are also limited. The work will interest researchers in insect metabolism and development; focused, tissue-resolved measurements together with stronger mechanistic controls would substantially strengthen the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Tunable Bessel beam two-photon fluorescence microscopy for high-speed volumetric imaging of brain dynamics

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Mengyang Jacky Li
   2. Jinghui Wang
   3. Mikolaj Walczak
   4. Yuqing Qiu
   5. Colleen Russell
   6. Miroslaw Janowski
   7. Piotr Walczak
   8. Yajie Liang
   9. Tian-Ming Fu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study substantially advances the imaging toolbox available to neuroscientists by presenting a tunable Bessel (tBessel-TPFM) platform that enables high-speed volumetric two-photon imaging. The evidence supporting the novel methodology is convincing, with rigorous benchmarking and demonstrations of a wide range of neuroimaging applications covering vascular dynamics, neurovascular coupling, optogenetic perturbation, and microglial responses. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and imaging system tool developers.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Gait transition mechanism from quadrupedal to bipedal locomotion in the Japanese macaque based on inverted pendulum

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Koki Nishizaki
   2. Mau Adachi
   3. Yuichi Ambe
   4. Yushi Tsuruse
   5. Ryo Iba
   6. Hiroko Oshima
   7. Takashi Suzuki
   8. Yasuo Higurashi
   9. Kei Mochizuki
   10. Katsumi Nakajima
   11. Shinya Aoi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study that advances our understanding of the transition from quadrupedal to bipedal gait in a neuromechanical model of the Japanese macaque. The method and results are solid; the neuromusculoskeletal model successfully reproduces experimental data, and the stability analysis based on an inverted pendulum model effectively explains the effects of different transition strategies. However, the study would benefit from a more comprehensive sensitivity analysis. The findings are highly relevant for researchers in motor control, comparative physiology/biomechanics, and robotics.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Divergent spatial codes in retrosplenial cortex and hippocampus support multi-scale representation of complex environments

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Célia Laurent
   2. Nada El Mahmoudi
   3. David M. Smith
   4. Francesca Sargolini
   5. Pierre-Yves Jacob

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports results showing how different neurons in the dysgranular retrosplenial cortex code spatial orientation. Specifically, the paper reports that some neurons maintain tuning for a single head direction across multi-compartmental environments, while other neurons are tuned to different head directions that reflect the geometry within each compartment. The study was viewed as likely to expand the field's understanding of directional tuning of neurons, but incomplete evidence was provided to support the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. RHODOPSIN 7: An ancient non-retinal photoreceptor for contrast vision, darkness detection, and circadian regulation

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Valentina Kirsch
   2. Nils Reinhard
   3. Heiko Hartlieb
   4. Annika Mohr
   5. Dirk Rieger
   6. Peter Soba
   7. Charlotte Helfrich-Förster
   8. Pingkalai R. Senthilan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study investigates, from multiple angles, the still-debated function of insect rhodopsin-7 (Rh7). The authors present compelling results for its ancient phylogenetic origin across pan-arthropods, a non-visual role based on expression analyses in the fly brain, an unusual G-protein signalling pathway, and - using behavioural genetics - that Rh7 affects how Drosophila melanogaster interprets and responds to light-dark transitions. Through this, the work provides fundamental new insights into the evolution and function of non-visual opsins.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. A lobule-specific neuronal representation of song temporal structure in the songbird cerebellum

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Roman Ursu
   2. Eduarda Centeno
   3. Arthur Leblois

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     There is a perennial question in the field of birdsong: the contribution of the cerebellum to singing and processing song-related information. This study provides a valuable first step into this discussion, using electrophysiology of cerebellar neurons during a battery of assays, including singing and song playback. While the electrophysiological dataset here is novel and could shed light on key aspects of the neural control of vocal behavior, the evidence provided for the conclusions reached by the authors is currently incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Leveraging Disease Association Degree for High-Accuracy MicroRNA Target Prediction

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Baiming Chen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study introduces miRTarDS, a novel computational framework that predicts microRNA-target interactions based on a publicly available pretrained Sentence-BERT language model and downstream classification analysis. The strength of the evidence is incomplete, as the evaluation framework relies on unreliable ground-truth and false sets. Furthermore, the analysis fails to compare miRTarDS against existing state-of-the-art biomedical language models.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Unraveling the Molecular Mechanisms of ABHD5 Membrane Targeting

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Amit Kumar
   2. Matthew Sanders
   3. Huamei Zhang
   4. Li Zhou
   5. Shahnaz Parveen
   6. Miriam C. Jensen
   7. Thomas J.D. Jorgensen
   8. Christopher V. Kelly
   9. James G Granneman
   10. Yu-ming Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of how the lipase regulator ABHD5 may control lipase activity through interactions with lipid droplets and cellular membranes. By combining multiscale molecular dynamics simulations with experimental approaches, the authors provide novel molecular insights into this membrane-protein interaction and present evidence suggesting that the regulatory mechanism depends on protein conformational changes and local membrane remodeling. While much of the evidence supporting the main conclusions is convincing, several aspects of the analysis, interpretation, and discussion remain incomplete. Overall, this work will be of interest to structural and molecular biologists working on lipid metabolism and membrane biophysics.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Assessing evidence of immune imprinting in serological patterns of influenza immune response

    This article has 15 authors:

    1. Bernardo García-Carreras
    2. Bingyi Yang
    3. James A. Hay
    4. C. Jessica E. Metcalf
    5. Matt D. T. Hitchings
    6. Claire P. Smith
    7. Siyu Chen
    8. Jonathan M. Read
    9. Huachen Zhu
    10. Chaoqiang Jiang
    11. Kin On Kwok
    12. Steven Riley
    13. Sarah Cobey
    14. Justin Lessler
    15. Derek A. T. Cummings

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study highlights the challenge of identifying the role of immune imprinting in influenza immunity. The manuscript provides solid evidence that statistical support for imprinting depends heavily on model choice and can be found in the absence of imprinting due to age-related processes. However, the results are incomplete in that the impact of incorrectly modeling imprinting is not clear. The work will be of interest to researchers who study adaptive immunity in any system where imprinting may be observed.

    Reviewed by eLife