eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Microbial consortia in salt marsh sediments are sequentially buried over millennia and genomic complementarity analysis indicates an important role in complex carbon decomposition

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Joseph Henry Vineis
   2. Ashley Noelani Bulseco
   3. Zoe G Cardon
   4. Jennifer L Bowen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides a valuable genome-centric characterization of microbial communities across deep sediment cores from a Spartina patens salt marsh. The study provides claims on the metabolic capabilities of the deep sediment microbiome as well as on a burial microbial assembly process and functional complementarity at depth. However, some of these claims remain incomplete and would benefit from further supporting evidence. Overall, this work will be of interest to microbial ecologists working on wetlands.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Extracting Value Coding Features from Individual Serotonin Neurons

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Emerson F. Harkin
   2. Jean-Claude Béïque
   3. Richard Naud

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors used a Bayesian modeling framework to fit behavior and serotonin neuron activity to reward history across multiple timescales. A key goal was to distinguish value coding from other influences, particularly thirst, by comparing model fits across neurons. Although the question and approach are valuable, several limitations of the current manuscript mean that support for the conclusions is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Identifying regulators of associative learning using a protein-labelling approach in C. elegans

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Aelon Rahmani
   2. Anna McMillen
   3. Ericka Allen
   4. Radwan Ansaar
   5. Renee Green
   6. Michaela Johnson
   7. Anne Poljak
   8. Yee Lian Chew

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable work defines a "learning proteome" for a C. elegans gustatory associative learning paradigm. These results provide the field with a new set of genes to further explore their roles in learning and memory, provide new tools for other labs to employ in their investigations of behavior, and molecular pathways revelant for C. elegans learning and memory. The methodological evidence and the quality of the dataset are convincing. The results will be of interest to neuroscientists and developmental biologists seeking to understand the self-assembly and operation of neural circuits for learning and memory.

     [Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

   Reviewed by eLife, Review Commons

4. Spatiotemporal relationships between extreme weather events and arbovirus transmission across Brazil

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Victoria M Cox
   2. Felipe Campos de Melo Iani
   3. Wes Hinsley
   4. Pedro S Peixoto
   5. Flavio Codeço Coelho
   6. Carlos Augusto Prete
   7. Megan O’Driscoll
   8. Neil Ferguson
   9. Samir Bhatt
   10. Nuno R Faria
   11. Ilaria Dorigatti

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings from a spatiotemporal analysis of arbovirus case notification data from 2013 to 2020 in Brazil, reporting associations between covariates representing potential drivers of arbovirus transmission and recorded incidence. The work is methodologically solid, though it is unclear how much explanatory power inclusion of the covariates adds. The findings will be of interest to researchers working on the epidemiology of arboviruses.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Currentscape analysis of dendritic inputs during place field dynamics

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Bence Fogel
   2. Balázs B Ujfalussy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study offers a valuable advance for neuroscience by extending a visualization tool that enables intuitive assessment of how dendritic and synaptic currents shape the output of neurons. The evidence supporting the tool's capabilities is convincing and solid, with well-documented code, algorithmic innovation, and application to hippocampal pyramidal neurons - although experimental confirmation of the predictions is not provided. The work will be of interest to computational and systems neuroscientists seeking accessible methods to examine dendritic computations.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Multi-timescale neural adaptation underlying long-term musculoskeletal reorganization

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Roland Philipp
   2. Yuki Hara
   3. Naohito Ohta
   4. Naoki Uchida
   5. Tomomichi Oya
   6. Tetsuro Funato
   7. Kazuhiko Seki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates how the nervous system adapts to changes in body mechanics using a tendon transfer surgery that imposes a mismatch between muscle contraction and mechanical action. Using electromyography (EMG) to track muscle activity in two macaque monkeys, the authors conclude that there is a two-phase recovery process that reflects different underlying strategies. However, neither monkey's data includes a full set of EMG and kinematic measurements, and the two datasets are not sufficiently aligned with each other from a behavioural point of view; as a result, the evidence supporting the conclusions is solid but could be improved.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Synaptic density and relative connectivity conservation maintain circuit stability across development

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Ingo Fritz
   2. Feiyu Wang
   3. Ricardo Chirif
   4. Nikos Malakasis
   5. Julijana Gjorgjieva
   6. André Ferreira Castro

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors have performed a potentially valuable new kind of analysis in connectomics, mapping to an interesting developmental problem of synaptic input to sensory neurons. While the analysis itself is solid, the authors have drawn broader conclusions than are directly supported by the presented data. With more measured claims and greater clarity and explanations for the analysis, the study could potentially become stronger.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The titin N2A-MARP signalosome constrains muscle longitudinal hypertrophy in response to stretch

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Robbert van der Pijl
   2. Jochen Gohlke
   3. Joshua Strom
   4. Eva Peters
   5. Shengyi Shen
   6. Stefan Conijn
   7. Zaynab Hourani
   8. Stephan Lange
   9. Ju Chen
   10. Paul Langlais
   11. Siegfried Labeit
   12. Henk Granzier
   13. Coen Ottenheijm

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study presents important insights into the regulation of muscle hypertrophy, regulated by Muscle Ankyrin Repeat Proteins (MARPs) and mTOR. The methods are overall solid and complementary, with only minor limitations. Overall, the findings will be of interest for both muscle-biology specialists and the broader mechanobiology community.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Quinolines interfere with heme-mediated activation of artemisinins

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Melissa R Rosenthal
   2. Daniel E Goldberg

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study is important as it demonstrates that 4-aminoquinoline antimalarials antagonize artemisinin activity under physiologically relevant conditions. Using isogenic parasite lines and a chemical probe, the authors provide mechanistic insight and compelling evidence implicating PfCRT in this antagonism. However, some weaknesses have been identified that limit full interpretation of the findings, which are based solely on in vitro assays, though the results have implications that will be of importance in optimizing future antimalarial combination strategies.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. vassi – verifiable, automated scoring of social interactions in animal groups

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Paul Nührenberg
    2. Aneesh PH Bose
    3. Alex Jordan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study presents vassi, a Python package that streamlines the preparation of training data for machine-learning-based classification of social behaviors in animal groups. This package is a valuable resource for researchers with computational expertise, implementing a framework for the detection of directed social interactions within a group and an interactive tool for reviewing and correcting behavior detections. However, the strength of evidence that the method is widely applicable remains incomplete, performance on benchmark dyadic datasets is comparable to existing approaches, and performance scores on collective behavioral datasets are low. While the package can analyze behavior in large groups of animals, it only outputs dyadic interactions within these groups and does not account for behaviors where more than two animals may be interacting.

    Reviewed by eLife