eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. A multi-resolution imaging and analysis pipeline for comparative circuit reconstruction in insects

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Valentin Gillet
   2. Marcel E Sayre
   3. Griffin S Badalamente
   4. Nicole L Schieber
   5. Kevin Tedore
   6. Jan Funke
   7. Stanley Heinze

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this important study, a new multi-scale imaging workflow promises to accelerate and democratize comparative connectomics, with projectome-level data informing synapse-level connectivity. While the pipeline and time savings are convincing, the evidence for the segmentation methodology as a reusable community resource is incomplete, with key metrics like error rates, annotation times, and proof-reading times not reported. Furthermore, the evidence on the utility of projectome-level information for analysing brains appears misleading. By clarifying the findings and ensuring that the complete software pipeline is available in online open source repositories alongside precise documentation, the authors would deliver on their vision to enable any laboratory to map and analyse brain connectomes.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Integrated single cell multiomic profiling and functional validation reveal distinct cellular routes to human plasma cell differentiation

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Colin A Fields
   2. James F Read
   3. Heather Coffman
   4. Edward P Petrow
   5. Anthony Bosco
   6. Deepta Bhattacharya

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     It remains unclear how human antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) differentiate. In this study, the authors discovered a CD30⁺ intermediate subset that appears during the transition from B cells to ASCs, providing a potential ontogeny for extra-germinal center B cell differentiation. This study is useful because it identifies novel intermediate markers that enable tracking of human ASC ontogeny, offering new insights into ASC development. However, the evidence is incomplete, and we see three major limitations: (1) the data are largely representative, requiring additional reproducibility; (2) the bioinformatics analysis is limited; and (3) step-wise phenotypic validation would require lineage-tracing experiments on sorted populations.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. JAK-STAT Pathway Heterogeneity Governs Immunotherapy Response in Breast Cancer

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jianbo Zhou
   2. Heng Zhang
   3. Hailin Tang
   4. Lei Yu
   5. Fu Peng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This multi-omics study provides a comprehensive characterization of the context-dependent roles of the JAK-STAT pathway (JSP) across different cellular compartments within the breast cancer microenvironment. The authors present convincing evidence that high JSP activity paradoxically drives anti-tumor cytotoxicity in T cells but promotes malignancy and immunosuppression in tumor epithelial cells, leading to the fundamental discovery that broad JAK-STAT inhibition could be therapeutically counterproductive. Ultimately, the identification of the immune-related JSP score and the STAT4 axis as predictive biomarkers for anti-PD-1 immunotherapy response, particularly in triple-negative breast cancer, offers critical insights for precise patient stratification and targeted therapeutic interventions.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. The Periaqueductal Gray Selectively Supports Reversal Learning During a Flexible Discrimination Task in Mice

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Daniela Lichtman
   2. Eyal Bergmann
   3. Jonathan Nicholas
   4. Raphael T Gerraty
   5. Itamar Kahn

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript demonstrates the feasibility and potential value of using functional MRI in awake, behaving mice, enabling assessment of distributed brain activity during ongoing behavior in a manner analogous to human fMRI. The valuable findings suggest that the periaqueductal gray (PAG), a midbrain structure classically linked to threat processing and aversive learning, also contributes to reversal learning. If supported, this result would carry theoretical and practical implications for our subfield by expanding the computational roles attributed to the PAG and motivating cross-species circuit-level investigations. However, the strength of evidence is, at present, incomplete, and several key claims are only partially supported by the current analyses.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Drowning a frog respiratory rhythm generator in a wash of excitation: State-dependent architecture of a ventilatory oscillator

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Mufaddal I Baghdadwala
   2. Marina R Sartori
   3. Richard. JA Wilson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Using isolated frog brainstem preparations, pharmacological manipulation of excitability, systematic extracellular unit mapping, and focal microinjections, this study provides important findings on whether the buccal rhythm generator is a discrete anatomical nucleus or a distributed, state-dependent network. The question is conceptually significant and of interest to researchers working within respiratory neurobiology and rhythmogenicity in general, and the preparation and experimental strategy are generally appropriate. However, the evidence for the strongest architectural claims is incomplete, with pseudoreplication in pooled unit-mapping analyses, inconsistent statistical reporting, and limited controls in necessity/sufficiency experiments. Overall, although data are largely convincing, substantial revision and more nuanced interpretation of the results are required before claims of state-dependent architectural reorganization can be considered well-supported.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A developmentally regulated long-range enhancer-promoter contact mediates human neural development

   This article has 21 authors:

   1. Devin Bready
   2. Shuai Wang
   3. Niklas Ravn-Boess
   4. Joshua Frenster
   5. Jonathan Sabio
   6. Robert Kushmakov
   7. Finnegan Clark
   8. Adler Guerrero
   9. Cathryn Lapierre
   10. Kristyn Galbraith
   11. Catherine Do
   12. Priscillia Lhoumaud
   13. Jod Prado
   14. Albert Jiang
   15. Sara Haddock
   16. Claire D Kim
   17. Matija Snuderl
   18. Timothée Lionnet
   19. Aristotelis Tsirigos
   20. Jane Skok
   21. Dimitris G Placantonakis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this important study, Bready et al. investigate how a highly conserved long-range enhancer mediates neural-specific SOX2 regulation during neural differentiation using human neural stem cells. This study has broad appeal to developmental neuroscience; however, the data remain incomplete given the need for homozygous enhancer knockouts and biological replicates in the scRNAseq assays.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. ATP8B1–TMEM30B Flippase Activity Maintains Stereocilia Lipid Asymmetry Required for Hearing

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Henry N De Hoyos
   2. Sihan Li
   3. Jun-Sub Im
   4. Alyssa Luz-Ricca
   5. Betsy Szeto
   6. Rachel Jonas
   7. Emma Kim
   8. Nikhil Amin
   9. Jung-Bum Shin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Mechanical transduction channels of sensory hair cells possess lipid scramblase activity. Membrane lipid disruption resulting from mechanical transduction is thought to be restored by flippase activities. This fundamental study provides compelling evidence that ATP8B1, a P4-ATP flippase and its subunit TMEM30B, are key in mediating this restorative function in outer hair cells of the mammalian cochlea.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Sensory adaptation supports flexible evidence accumulation during perceptual decision making

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Kara D McGaughey
   2. Joshua I Gold

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study measures single-unit activity in the middle temporal area (MT) of awake-behaving monkeys to test the idea that sensory adaptation contributes to flexible evidence accumulation during decision-making. Solid evidence is provided, showing that adaptation to different temporal contexts shapes both perceptual judgements and neural responses, but analyses aimed at establishing a direct link between them are less persuasive. This work has the potential to be of interest to a broad range of researchers working on visual perception, plasticity, and decision making.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Alpha oscillations and aperiodic neural dynamics jointly predict visual temporal resolution, confidence, and dependence on prior experience

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Gianluca Marsicano
   2. Michele Deodato
   3. David Melcher

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study developed a novel paradigm combined with EEG recordings to examine the neural mechanisms underlying temporal integration in perception and its modulation by prior history (i.e., the serial dependence effect). The results provide solid evidence that two key EEG features, namely the individual alpha frequency and the aperiodic slope, jointly and independently shape perceptual integration and its reliance on prior information. While additional control analyses would further strengthen the main conclusions, the findings will be of broad interest to researchers studying perception, decision-making, inter-individual differences, and brain rhythms.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Plasticity Associated with Adoption of Social Roles in Clown Anemonefish

    This article has 10 authors:

    1. Lili F Vizer
    2. Douglas Alvarado
    3. Colleen Bove
    4. Marcela Herrera
    5. Annabel Hughes
    6. Kian Thompson
    7. Steven M Bogdanowicz
    8. Vincent Laudet
    9. Sarah W Davies
    10. Peter M Buston

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      Using the clownfish model, this study examines how growth, feeding, and agonistic behavior result in socially dominant or subordinate states in size- and age-matched individuals of the clownfish, Amphiprion percula. The authors complement this work with whole-body transcriptomics and find significant variation in genes and gene co-expression modules related to growth and satiety-related pathways, as well as ossification-related genes. They provide solid evidence that emerging dominants grow more, eat more, and behave more aggressively than subordinate or solitary individuals; these phenotypic differences are accompanied by distinct gene expression profiles, including variation in growth- and satiety-related pathways. The work is valuable in advancing our understanding of how the social environment regulates phenotypic change; however, claims regarding the mechanistic role of gene expression are only partially supported by the current analyses.

    Reviewed by eLife