eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Multidimensional in vitro assay for antimalarial combination testing and pharmacodynamic modeling – the MULT-i ² assay

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Angela Hellingman
   2. Christin Gumpp
   3. Jörg J. Möhrle
   4. Belen Tornesi
   5. Didier Leroy
   6. Sergio Wittlin
   7. Pascal Mäser
   8. Nicolas M. B. Brancucci
   9. Sebastian G. Wicha
   10. Matthias Rottmann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study introduces MULTI i², a robust and high-throughput method to measure Plasmodium falciparum viability in the presence of drugs. This new assay offers significant time savings over the traditional Parasite Reduction Rate (PRR) assay and should enable faster screening of drug combinations, which is urgently needed in the field. The assay is well validated, with convincing data showing it can reproduce known drug interactions and identify new interaction patterns.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A paradoxical relationship between mitochondrial calcium regulation and retinal ganglion cell degeneration after axon damage

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Sean McCracken
   2. Minglei Zhao
   3. Kyler Squirrell
   4. Christopher Zhao
   5. Saman Behboodi Tanourlouee
   6. Michelle Aum
   7. Philip R Williams

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study makes a solid and valuable contribution to elucidating the intricate relationship between mitochondrial calcium and neuronal survival. Well-controlled experiments show that homeostatic mitochondrial calcium correlates with the most resilient neuronal subtypes after optic nerve injury. However, altering mitochondrial calcium levels does not affect neuronal survival as initially predicted by this correlation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Mechanical interaction enables a collective mode of protocell proliferation

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Yisen Li
   2. Yilin Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a key finding: self-generated mechanical stresses enable collective protocell proliferation without dedicated division machinery, offering insight into primitive life's population growth. While quantitative imaging, membrane tension measurements, and computational modeling support the mechanism, establishing causal links between deformation and division and testing sensitivity assumptions would strengthen the work. Overall, the work reports important findings, and although the evidence in support of the conclusions is largely solid, some incomplete elements need to be addressed.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Visuomotor flexibility is embedded in the topography of frontal cortex

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Nicholas M Dotson
   2. John H Reynolds

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines experimental evidence with computational modeling to suggest that neurons in the frontal eye field form two overlapping topographical maps, one for visual inputs and the other for eye movement directions. The experiments leverage the smooth cortex of the marmoset to provide solid evidence that two maps exist at different scales. The modelling work provides a potential mechanistic insight into how these patterns may be used for flexible visuomotor transformations.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Petabase-scale Papillomavirus Discovery

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jessica YQ Shen
   2. Anton Korobeynikov
   3. Rayan Chikhi
   4. Artem Babaian

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     By mining the Logan assemblage of the Sequence Read Archive to reveal substantial papillomavirus diversity, this valuable study establishes a framework for integrating viral discovery with host, geographic, and ecological metadata. The evidence for identifying novel papillomavirus sequences is convincing, supported by large-scale sequence searches, established L1-based typing criteria, phylogenetic analyses, protein annotation, and structural comparisons. The broader host-association and ecological conclusions are more tenuous due to heterogeneous public metadata and uneven sampling, and would benefit from clearer discussion of potential biases, contamination, endogenous viral elements, and alternative explanations. The work should be of interest to a broad range of colleagues in the areas of microbiome research, virology, and viral evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Human mitochondrial DNA variants influence telomere length: evidence from a transmitochondrial cybrid model

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Manon Mahieu
   2. Jean-Philippe Defour
   3. Barbara Mathieu
   4. Elena Richiardone
   5. Isaac Heremans
   6. Elisa Fabiole
   7. Gabriel Levy
   8. Gabriel Le Berre
   9. Isabelle Scheers
   10. Bénédicte Brichard
   11. Thierry Arnould
   12. Patrick Revy
   13. Guido Bommer
   14. Bernard Gallez
   15. Cyril Corbet
   16. Anabelle Decottignies

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study addresses a timely issue at the intersection of mitochondrial and telomere biology by focusing on the relationship between naturally occurring variants in the mitochondrial genome and telomere length. This work thereby provides a conceptual and experimental framework for investigating communication between mitochondria and telomeres. Using an innovative transmitochondrial cybrid approach, the authors provide evidence that mitochondrial DNA variants influence telomere maintenance through effects on mitochondrial function, reactive oxygen species, and NAD⁺-dependent repair processes. The evidence supporting the central conclusion that mitochondrial genotype influences telomere-associated phenotypes is convincing and is strengthened by the use of complementary functional and rescue experiments. However, some of the mechanistic interpretations and broader conclusions regarding telomere length inheritance in humans would benefit from additional donors and longitudinal analyses following cybrid generation, or more cautious framing.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. All-optical analysis of electrical coupling in muscle ensembles reveals contributions of individual innexins to cell synchronization and locomotion

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Nora Elvers
   2. Amelie Bergs
   3. Christin Bessel
   4. Jana Liewald
   5. Alexander Gottschalk

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines behavioural analysis, voltage imaging and electrophysiology to advance our understanding of muscle coordination at the cell-to-cell level, in Caenorhabditis elegans. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing; however, the use of correlation in some aspects of data interpretation is a relative weakness. The technically sophisticated optogenetic voltage clamp approach introduced here can be applied to other small, transparent animals, making these findings of broad interest to researchers studying electrical coupling between cells or utilising optical electrophysiology techniques.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Arm Control and its Recovery after Selective Lesions of Sensorimotor Cortex and the Red Nucleus: A Kinematic Study in Non-Human Primates

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Anna Baines
   2. Annie Poll
   3. Anne ME Baker
   4. John W Krakauer
   5. Stuart N Baker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study describes how selective lesions of key cortical and subcortical motor areas affect reaching actions in macaque monkeys. The results will be of interest to both basic and clinical researchers studying the neural control of movement. Kinematic analysis of movement quality is solid but could be improved by considering other metrics, especially those that relate to grasping. Evidence for the general claims related to the role of specific motor areas is incomplete because the lesions did not fully eliminate any single area while simultaneously involving neighbouring areas.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A network perspective on the role of c-di-GMP-associated protein complexes in biofilm formation

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Marie-Francoise Noirot-Gros
   2. Peter Larsen
   3. Sara Forrester
   4. Rosemarie Wilton
   5. Kenneth M Kemner
   6. Romain Briandet
   7. Gyorgy Babnigg
   8. Philippe Noirot

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study presents a comprehensive exploration of c-di-GMP-associated protein interaction networks in Pseudomonas fluorescens, with a particular focus on biofilm-related phenotypes. The evidence is convincing, supported by a genome-wide yeast two-hybrid screen, phenotypic analyses, and experimental validation. The work identifies multiple interaction hubs and provides a resource that will be of use to the biofilm and c-di-GMP communities, while additional mechanistic exploration would further enhance its impact by clarifying the biological roles of many of the identified interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Sex differences in exploration–exploitation strategies during home-cage decision making

    This article has 14 authors:

    1. Chantelle L Murrell
    2. Alex A Legaria
    3. Katie B McCullough
    4. Andrew Nwacha
    5. Monsurat O Nasiru
    6. Sebastian Alves Ferreira Dias
    7. Rebecca Chase
    8. Mason R Barrett
    9. Matt Gaidica
    10. Naoki Hiratani
    11. Meaghan C Creed
    12. Joseph D Dougherty
    13. Susan E Maloney
    14. Alexxai V Kravitz

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      Murrell et al. describe a high-throughput method, the Feeding Experimentation Device (FED3), to study food foraging strategies in mice. The authors provide solid evidence about key sex differences in foraging strategies, specifically the finding of greater male win-stay behavior. Further consideration of how sex differences could be uniquely influenced by FED3 testing conditions (e.g., single-housing, hormones) and task demands (e.g., 100-0 vs. 80-20) would be helpful. Given this open source FED3 platform, the authors provide valuable findings that have utility to the field of behavioral neuroscience, specifically to those interested in studying reward-related behavior.

    Reviewed by eLife