eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Identifying and targeting the Mg-Fe-PmrAB regulatory circuit reverses phosphate starvation-driven polymyxin resistance in Enterobacteriaceae

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Guangming Zhang
   2. Ziqing Deng
   3. Jiezhang Jiang
   4. Minji Wang
   5. Xiaoyuan Wang
   6. Xiaoyun Liu
   7. Aixin Yan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study characterizes a potentially targetable mechanism by which phosphate scarcity drives polymyxin B resistance in Enterobacteriaceae. The findings are important. While some aspects of the approach are very strong, particularly the diversity of techniques, it is recommended to include genetic controls and antibiotic resistance experiments in order to strengthen the evidence, which is currently solid. The clarity and presentation of the findings could also be improved.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Developmental Synchrony of Retinal Waves, Apoptosis, and Angiogenesis in Postnatal Retina

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Michael A. Savage
   2. Cori Bertram
   3. Jean de Montigny
   4. Courtney A. Thorne
   5. Rachel Queen
   6. Majlinda Lako
   7. Gerrit Hilgen
   8. Evelyne Sernagor

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study identifies apoptotic retinal ganglion cells as a potential source of ATP-mediated activation of PANX1 channels that initiate developmental retinal Ca²⁺ waves and coordinate microglial activation and vascular outgrowth with postnatal maturation. The work is important because it proposed an integrative framework linking programmed cell death, spontaneous neural activity, immune responses, and angiogenesis into a self-regulating developmental loop. The multimodal data are solid, but the mechanistic conclusions would be strengthened by complementary genetic approaches, such as PANX1 or BAX knockout models, to establish direct causality.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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