eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) zebrafish models reveal pan-lineage developmental dysregulation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Hannah Brunsdon
   2. Nuoya Wang
   3. Micha Sam Brickman Raredon
   4. Ralitsa R Madsen
   5. Robert K Semple
   6. E Elizabeth Patton

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study that establishes a zebrafish model of PIK3CA-related overgrowth syndrome. The imaging characterization of the mesodermal, particularly vascular, lesions of the model is compelling. The scRNA-Seq analysis is convincing, revealing key perturbations in the PIK3CA-mutation model, although deeper investigation of the exact mechanism leading to the lesions, as well as validation at different time points, could further strengthen the findings. This work will be of interest to medical biologists working on PROS, and potentially to a broader audience interested in non-cell-autonomous signaling of PIK3CA and its implications in other diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Single-cell spatial mapping reveals reproducible cell type organization and spatially-dependent gene expression in gastruloids

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Catherine G Triandafillou
   2. Pranav Sompalle
   3. Yael Heyman
   4. Arjun Raj

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This work presents important findings on quantifying gene coexpression from spatial omics. These quantification methods have been applied to gastruloid to describe how genes are spatialised. The description of the quantifying tools might be incomplete, which also weakens the biological message. Clearer formalization and justification of quantification will improve the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Essential function reflected in the phylodynamics of a multigene family – the pir genes of malaria parasites

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. Andrew P. Jackson
   2. Deirdre A. Cunningham
   3. Lin Lin
   4. Naomi Mara Claro de Oliveira
   5. Séverine C. Chevalley-Maurel
   6. Giulia Pianta
   7. Franziska Morhing
   8. Abigail K. Renfree
   9. Timothy S. Little
   10. Robert W. Moon
   11. Jean Langhorne
   12. Chris J. Janse
   13. Blandine M.D. Franke-Fayard
   14. Christiaan van Ooij

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study provides the first broad cross-species evolutionary analysis of the pir multigene family in malaria parasites, showing that the family evolved through rapid duplication and loss while retaining a small number of conserved orthologs with essential functions. The authors identify pirC1 as a key determinant of parasite growth across multiple Plasmodium species. However, the work remains incomplete because the mechanistic role of PIRCl and its precise subcellular localization are not directly resolved.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A genetic toolkit for stable episomal transgenesis in the anaerobic gut parasite Blastocystis ST7-B

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. M Rey Toleco
   2. Kevin SW Tan
   3. Mark van der Giezen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper presents a valuable methodology for genetic manipulation of Blastocystis. Although some imaging data are compelling, higher-quality figures together with more rigorous biochemical assays would strengthen support for the authors' claims. With the experimental evidence and graphics improved, the study would be of interest both to researchers investigating mitochondrial evolution under anaerobic conditions and to medical biologists studying human pathogens.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Somatic Programmed DNA Elimination is widespread in free-living Rhabditidae nematodes

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Caroline Launay
   2. Eva Wenger
   3. Brice Letcher
   4. Marie Delattre

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this manuscript, the authors investigate programmed DNA elimination (PDE) across nematodes using a large-scale cytological approach. This work is potentially significant because it expands PDE beyond a few known nematodes to a much broader set of Rhabditidae species, providing an important resource for investigating PDE's evolutionary origins and functions. The strength of evidence, however, is incomplete; the technique used to evaluate PDE is insufficient to provide unambiguous support for the phenomenon, so additional methods, such as genomic sequencing from a few species spanning the range of elimination levels, would be required to confirm these findings. This research would be of interest to geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and those working on the regulation of genome integrity.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Learning is a fundamental source of individuality

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Riddha Manna
   2. Johanni Brea
   3. Gonçalo Vasconcelos Braga
   4. Alireza Modirshanechi
   5. Ivan Tomić
   6. Ana Marija Jakšić

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a fundamental study of individual variation and the contribution of learning to behavioural individuality. The experimental design of massively parallel behavioural phenotypes is outstanding and the conclusions are supported by a compelling and rigorous analysis across a large number of experiments in thousands of individuals across genotypes and conditions. The dataset further represents an advance in studying visual associative learning thanks to the ability to make longitudinal measurements of many behavioural decisions within the same animals. These results are a major contribution to the understanding of the sources of behavioural individuality.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Atomistic simulations reveal sub- µ s contact dynamics in MUT-16 condensates

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Kumar Gaurav
   2. Lucia Baltz
   3. Diego Javier Páez-Moscoso
   4. René F. Ketting
   5. Lukas S. Stelzl

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings on phase-separated condensate formation by the MUT-16 protein, which plays a key role in small RNA biogenesis. A detailed analysis of the interactions governing condensate formation was carried out using coarse-grained and all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, complemented by in vitro phase separation experiments. While many of the results appear solid, a number of technical details are lacking, the computational part appears incomplete and would benefit from additional analyses and clarifications, and the novelty of the study should also be clarified, particularly in comparison with the authors' previous work on MUT-16. Overall, the work will be of interest to biophysicists and molecular biologists studying phase separation and biomolecular condensates.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. A validated antibody toolbox for ALS research

   This article has 34 authors:

   1. Riham Ayoubi
   2. Emma J MacDougall
   3. Ian McDowell
   4. Michael S Biddle
   5. Bárbara T Ferreira
   6. CongYao Zha
   7. Marie-France Dorion
   8. Jay P Ross
   9. Sara González Bolívar
   10. Vera Ruiz Moleón
   11. Charles Alende
   12. Vincent Francis
   13. Maryam Fotouhi
   14. Mathilde Chaineau
   15. Carol X.-Q Chen
   16. Valerio EC Piscopo
   17. Vincent Soubannier
   18. Tracy Keates
   19. Wen Hwa Lee
   20. Brian D Marsden
   21. Leonidas Koukouflis
   22. Edvard Wigren
   23. Carolyn A Marks
   24. Luke M Healy
   25. Patrick A Dion
   26. Guy A Rouleau
   27. Edward A Fon
   28. Harvinder S Virk
   29. Susanne Gräslund
   30. Opher Gileadi
   31. Aled M Edwards
   32. Thomas M Durcan
   33. Peter S McPherson
   34. Carl Laflamme

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Overall, this is a manuscript with solid evidence that delivers an important community resource for those performing experimental research in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The authors address the lack of validated tools for the detection and quantification of proteins associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) through an extensive screening of 303 commercially available antibodies to 33 protein targets. The effort invested in generating the knockout lines for validation experiments is a clear strength of the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Divergent spatiotemporal integration of whole-field visual motion in medaka and zebrafish larvae

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yasuko Isoe
   2. Yasmine Fatima Mabene
   3. Marie-Abèle Bind
   4. Florian Engert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides a quantitative comparison of how zebrafish and medaka larvae process visual motion, revealing clear differences in how they integrate information across space and time. The evidence is convincing, combining a broad set of behavioral assays with response decomposition and mechanistic modeling that together support the central conclusions. Some aspects remain incomplete, particularly the link between the spatial and temporal findings, the extent to which the model accounts for the full range of behavioral results, and the framing of broader evolutionary or social interpretations. Overall, the work offers a careful and informative analysis that should be of broad interest to researchers studying visual processing, sensorimotor computation, and comparative neuroscience.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Modality-Specific and Amodal Language Processing by Single Neurons

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Yair Lakretz
    2. Naama Friedmann
    3. Jean-Rémi King
    4. Emily Mankin
    5. Anthony Rangel
    6. Ariel Tankus
    7. Stanislas Dehaene
    8. Itzhak Fried

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study presents a large-scale characterization of single-neuron responses during reading and listening, enabling examination of both 'low-level' (orthographic/phonological) and 'higher-level' (syntactic) features, as well as links between single-neuron activity and multi-scale field potentials, making it a valuable resource for bridging micro- and macroscale accounts of language processing. The analyses identify modality-specific and putatively modality-independent responses across distributed brain regions, offering an intriguing framework for understanding how sensory-specific and abstract representations may relate. However, the evidence supporting the central claims is currently incomplete, due to limited population-level quantification, insufficient statistical characterization of how many neurons encode the relevant features, ambiguity in the interpretation of encoding model results, and a lack of rigorous tests of cross-modal generalization and alternative accounts, which together weaken the conclusions about amodal representations and hierarchical processing.

    Reviewed by eLife