eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Intravital calcium imaging of meningeal macrophages reveals niche-specific dynamics and aberrant responses to brain hyperexcitability

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Simone Carneiro-Nascimento
   2. Chao Wei
   3. Anna Gutterman
   4. Dan Levy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study presents a technically sophisticated intravital two-photon calcium imaging approach to characterize Ca²⁺ dynamics in distinct populations of meningeal macrophages in awake, freely behaving mice. These data are solid and suggest that meningeal macrophage calcium activity is tightly linked to anatomical sub-compartments, with potential implications for migraine and neuroinflammatory processes. Despite these strengths and broad relevance to neuroimmunology, several technical and interpretational issues limit the study, which could be addressed to strengthen this manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. The inactivation of DHHC7 in mouse liver promotes diet-induced obesity through a hepatic Prg4–GPR146 axis

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yingmin Sun
   2. Ying Liu
   3. Siyu Wang
   4. Hanyu Wu
   5. Xiaoli Hou
   6. Jiaqi Duan
   7. Junkai Pei
   8. Yanhua Xu
   9. Xiaoxiang Hu
   10. Bing Chen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides valuable evidence that hepatic DHHC7-dependent palmitoylation is a physiologically relevant regulator of systemic metabolism, and that loss of DHHC7 disrupts Gαi palmitoylation, activates cAMP-PKA-CREB signaling, and increases hepatic transcription and secretion of Prg4. The identification of Prg4 as a hepatokine that is elevated in vivo, together with some in vitro evidence for its interaction with GPR146, represents a conceptually novel contribution to the field. However, the evidence linking these mechanisms to systemic lipolysis, liver-adipose tissue crosstalk, and whole-body metabolic physiology remains incomplete, as the phenotypic analyses rely on a limited set of experiments and do not yet fully support claims regarding adipose tissue dysfunction or altered lipid flux.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Pulsed laser lensing for phase modulation in electron microscopy

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Daniel X. Du
   2. Adam C. Bartnik
   3. Cameron J. R. Duncan
   4. Usama Choudhry
   5. Tanya Tabachnik
   6. Chaim Sallah
   7. Yuki Ogawa
   8. Ebrahim Najafi
   9. Ding-Shyue Yang
   10. Jared M. Maxson
   11. Anthony W. P. Fitzpatrick

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study introduces a pulsed laser phase plate that generates stable phase contrast in electron microscopy, offering a practical alternative to continuous-wave designs that suffer from optical instabilities and diffraction artifacts. The experimental results demonstrate a controllable and stable electron phase shift, and the evidence supporting the feasibility of this approach for phase-contrast electron microscopy is convincing. Clarifying the agreement between experiment and theory and further elaborating on possible applications would strengthen the manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Patient-Specific Midbrain Organoids with CRISPR Correction Reveal Disease Mechanisms and Enable Therapeutic Evaluation in Neuronopathic Gaucher Disease

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Yi Lin
   2. Benjamin Liou
   3. Venette Fannin
   4. Stuart Adler
   5. Christopher N Mayhew
   6. Jason E Hammonds
   7. Yueh-Chiang Hu
   8. Jason Tchieu
   9. Wujuan Zhang
   10. Xueheng Zhao
   11. Rebecca L Beres
   12. Kenneth DR Setchell
   13. Ahmet Kaynak
   14. Xiaoyang Qi
   15. Ricardo A Feldman
   16. Ying Sun

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The manuscript presents important findings with theoretical or practical implications beyond a single subfield. The work is overall solid, and the methods, data, and analyses broadly support the claims. Although the novelty of this study and the work put into it are appreciated, there are also clearly some weaknesses that should be addressed.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Visible traits demonstrate that crispant founder mice can be used for phenotypic assessment

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Rebekah Tillotson
   2. Marina Gertsenstein
   3. Li-Hsin Chang
   4. Julie Ruston
   5. Fernando Bellido Molías
   6. Lauri G Lintott
   7. Christine Taylor
   8. Philippe Gautier
   9. Lauryl MJ Nutter
   10. Monica J Justice

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study offers important methodological advances for CRISPR-based mutagenesis in mice, highlighting the potential of founder animals for early phenotypic characterization. The authors present convincing evidence, supported by rigorous experimental design, that "crispant" (F0) analysis in mice, despite prior concerns about genetic mosaicism, can be utilized to assess protein function.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Mixture discrimination training induces durable and generalizable olfactory learning independent of odorant structure and concentration

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xiaoyue Chang
   2. Huibang Tan
   3. Jiehui Niu
   4. Kaiqi Yuan
   5. Rui Chen
   6. Wen Zhou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This potentially important study explores the specificity of olfactory perceptual learning. In keeping with previous work, the authors found that learning to discriminate between two enantiomers does not generalize across the nostrils or to unrelated enantiomers, whereas learning to discriminate odor mixtures does generalize across the nostrils and to other odor mixtures, with this learning effect persisting over at least two weeks. While the evidence presented to support these findings is convincing, it remains unclear why the results differ for enantiomers and why training on odor mixtures generalizes to other odor mixtures.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Single Transcript Level Atlas of Oxytocin and the Oxytocin Receptor in the Mouse Brain

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Vitaly Ryu
   2. Anisa Gumerova
   3. Georgii Pevnev
   4. Funda Korkmaz
   5. Hasni Kannangara
   6. Liam Cullen
   7. Ronit Witztum
   8. Steven Sims
   9. Tal Frolinger
   10. Ofer Moldavski
   11. Orly Barak
   12. Jay J. Cao
   13. Daria Lizneva
   14. Ki A. Goosens
   15. Tony Yuen
   16. Mone Zaidi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of OXT (oxytocin) neurons and OXTR (oxytocin receptor) expressions in mammalian brains using an advanced RNAscope at the single transcript level. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling using chromogenic assays and state-of-the-art microscopy. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and endocrinologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Adaptive variation in avian eggshell structure and gas conductance across elevational gradients?

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. David Ocampo
   2. Carlos Daniel Cadena
   3. Gustavo A. Londoño

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides evidence, albeit still incomplete, that high-elevation species lose water at slower rates than low-elevation species. The findings imply that egg physiology may be a factor limiting the distributional range of bird species. While this work reinforces the need for all life stages to be considered when evaluating physiological adjustment to climate change, the analyses as presented by the authors do not clearly highlight the specific impact of species differences in influencing these adjustments.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Cas9 ⁺ conditionally immortalized neutrophil progenitors as a tool for genome wide CRISPR screening for neutrophil differentiation and function

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Robyn M. Jong
   2. Krystal L. Ching
   3. Nicholas E. Garelis
   4. Alex Zilinskas
   5. Xammy Nguyenla
   6. Sagar Rawal
   7. Bianca C. Hill
   8. Bridget A. Luckie
   9. Lillian Shallow
   10. Jeffery S. Cox
   11. Gregory M. Barton
   12. Sarah A. Stanley

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this manuscript, Jong et al. provide and validate a very useful resource for performing CRISPR screenings to study neutrophil differentiation and function by generating Hoxb8 cells that constitutively express Cas9. This library-screening approach has the potential to improve on the established lentiviral CRISPR-Cas9 editing of Hoxb8 cells. However, the technical advances provided are only incremental and the results presented in this study do not significantly further our understanding of these cells, but rather provide a good validation of their Cas9+ modified version.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Predestined neutrophil heterogeneity in homeostasis varies in transcriptional and phenotypic response to Candida

    This article has 16 authors:

    1. Allison K. Scherer
    2. Alex Hopke
    3. Shuying Xu
    4. Adam Viens
    5. Natalie J. Alexander
    6. Kyle D. Timmer
    7. Dakota Archambault
    8. Daniel Floyd
    9. Natalie J. Atallah
    10. Catherine Rhee
    11. Murat Cetinbas
    12. David T. Scadden
    13. Daniel Irimia
    14. David B. Sykes
    15. Ruslan I. Sadreyev
    16. Michael K. Mansour

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      In their study, Scherer and colleagues aim to use analyses of single-cell clones of murine granulocyte monocyte progenitors that are conditionally immortalized, and analyses of neutrophils derived from those clones to characterize an experimental system for studying neutrophil heterogeneity. The multi-omic and functional analyses reported are valuable but the strength of the evidence presented in support of them is incomplete because the study lacks a rigorous demonstration that the neutrophil-like cells that they derive are fully mature neutrophils.

    Reviewed by eLife