eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Peristaltic contractions drive gut anisotropic growth through collective cell rearrangements

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Koji Kawamura
   2. Yoshiko Takahashi
   3. Masafumi Inaba

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a useful study investigating the role of peristalsis in the elongation of the gut, using the chick ceca as a model. The work employs optogenetics together with embryological approaches to establish links between peristaltic muscle contractions and downstream cell behaviors that lead to tube elongation. However, the work is somewhat incomplete, limited in mechanistic insights that would extend beyond prior work in the literature, which has already suggested a role for smooth muscle contractility in avian gut elongation.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Tatton-Brown-Rahman Syndrome-associated DNMT3A mutations de-repress cortical interneuron differentiation to disrupt neuronal network function

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Gareth Chapman
   2. Julianna J. Determan
   3. John R. Edwards
   4. Faiza Batool
   5. James E. Huettner
   6. Ramachandran Prakasam
   7. Sydney R. Crump
   8. Travis E. Law
   9. Haley Jetter
   10. Harrison W. Gabel
   11. Kristen L. Kroll

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study that develops multiple human iPSC-based models to study the consequences of DNMT3A mutations in Tatton-Brown-Rahman Syndrome. Convincing evidence shows dysregulation of GABAergic interneuron development and function, and the authors identify some of the key signaling mechanisms underlying these changes. This study will be of interest for understanding the functions of DNMT3A in brain development and the causes of neurological dysfunction in Tatton-Brown-Rahman Syndrome.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Auditory-motor surprisal reveals learning across multiple timescales during exploration and production

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Haiqin Zhang
   2. Giorgia Cantisani
   3. Shihab Shamma

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study builds a novel auditory-motor paradigm to investigate how the brain learns associations between movements and their auditory consequences. Solid evidence is provided for early ERPs (50-100 ms latency) reflecting violations of established key-pitch mappings. The writing, however, could be streamlined to better emphasize the paper's key contribution, and some statistical analyses might be improved.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Task-Dependent Motor Unit Recruitment and Rate Coding Reveal Redistribution of Neural Drive in the Human Hand

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Marius Osswald
   2. Jaime Ibáñez
   3. Martin Regensburger
   4. Nick Unbehaun
   5. Alessandro Del Vecchio

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study asked whether the behaviour of motor units from a hand muscle changed across the two mechanical actions it performs. The authors used high-density intramuscular electrodes to record the activity of several motor units and reported changes in motor unit recruitment order across tasks that were not dependent on motor unit properties, suggesting differential spinal contributions to the two actions. However, the evidence supporting their main claims is incomplete, and some of the conclusions are based on unsubstantiated assumptions: the authors should correct several key analyses and temper claims that are not directly backed up by their data.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Collective directional memory controls the range of epithelial cell migration

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Helena Canever
   2. Hugo Lachuer
   3. Quentin Delaunay
   4. François Sipieter
   5. Nicolas Audugé
   6. Philippe P Girard
   7. Nicolas Borghi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors make the valuable observation that directional memory during epithelial cell migration is enhanced compared to single-cell migration. They attribute this effect to adherens junctions and vinculin dimerization. In the work, central measures should be defined more precisely, and the support for their claims about the roles of adherens junctions and vinculin dimerization in memory enhancement remains incomplete.

     [Editors' note: this paper was previously reviewed by another journal.]

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Diet-conditioned microbiota enhances fecal microbiota transplantation efficacy in alcoholic liver disease through caproic acid-PPARα signaling

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Nishu Choudhary
   2. Ashi Mittal
   3. Sandeep Kumar
   4. Kavita Yadav
   5. Anupama Kumari
   6. Deepanshu Maheshwari
   7. Jaswinder Singh Maras
   8. Anupam Kumar
   9. Shiv K Sarin
   10. Shvetank Sharma

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study provides valuable findings suggesting that modifying the donor's diet improves the effectiveness of fecal transplant therapies for liver disease. Although the reported results are of value, the evidence supporting the overall conclusions is incomplete. In particular, causal inferences regarding the effects of microbiota composition, as well as caproic acid signaling on the phenotypes studied, need further confirmation.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Metabolic compensation via gluconeogenesis explains the non-essentiality of glycogen phosphorylase as an insecticidal target in Plutella xylostella

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yifei Zhou
   2. Yanqi Kang
   3. Yan Liu
   4. Ruichi Li
   5. Dongliang Wang
   6. Chong Yi
   7. Yifan Li
   8. Yalin Zhang
   9. Zhen Tian
   10. Jiyuan Liu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study addresses the mechanism of action of benzoylurea insecticides and explores the metabolic consequences of inhibiting glycogen breakdown in insects. Both reviewers identify major flaws with the premise of the work. The strength of the provided evidence is inadequate as the data do not, or poorly, support several central claims. The significance of the findings is considered marginal.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Understanding neural circuit principles for representation learning through joint-embedding predictive architectures

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Ashena Gorgan Mohammadi
   2. Manu Srinath Halvagal
   3. Friedemann Zenke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript proposes a valuable idea on how cortical networks may learn a helpful representation of sensory stimuli. The model implementing this idea is tested in multiple experimental paradigms. However, the evidence remains incomplete as to whether the method supports both invariance and equivariance and whether it can estimate the dynamics of the moving object.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Learned and inferred valence arise from interactions between stable and dynamic subnetworks

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Marc E Normandin
   2. Pedro M Ogallar
   3. Matthew R Lopez
   4. Isabel A Muzzio

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines how the prelimbic cortex represents learned and generalized threat over time and identifies potentially distinct stable and dynamic subnetworks that may support these functions. The work is conceptually interesting and is strengthened by the longitudinal calcium imaging approach and the inclusion of key control groups. However, the evidence supporting the claims is incomplete, particularly because the interpretations regarding inference, time-dependent representational change, and the dissociation of neural activity from freezing behavior extend beyond what is currently established by the data.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Predicting functional topography of the human visual cortex from cortical anatomy at scale

    This article has 11 authors:

    1. Fernanda L Ribeiro
    2. Robert Satzger
    3. Felix Hoffstaedter
    4. Christian Bürger
    5. Peer Herholz
    6. David Linhardt
    7. Noah C Benson
    8. D Samuel Schwarzkopf
    9. Alexander M Puckett
    10. Steffen Bollmann
    11. Martin N Hebart

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study presents a tool that uses brain anatomy to predict the layout and size of early visual maps, and it is strengthened by the use of a large and diverse collection of scans to examine differences across people and groups. The evidence is solid for the general usefulness of the approach, but incomplete for some of the broader claims about prediction accuracy and use across data sets, particularly for estimates of map size and for showing that the model improves on repeated functional measurements. This paper is likely to be of significant interest to visual perception researchers, especially those who use fMRI.

    Reviewed by eLife