eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Fragile polyQ assemblies cause Golgipathy in Huntington’s disease

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Lixiang Ma
   2. Xinyu Chen
   3. Yang Liu
   4. Lijun Dai
   5. Fangzhou Ye
   6. Weiqi Yang
   7. Hada Buhe
   8. Jixin Ma
   9. Chenyun Song
   10. Li Li
   11. Dandan Fan
   12. Fanxun Chen
   13. Haoman Chen
   14. Jianwei Shuai
   15. Jianzhong Su
   16. Hexige Saiyin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this study, the authors propose a role for the Huntingtin protein in the organization of the Golgi apparatus and examine the effect of polyQ aggregates at the Golgi. The observations are interesting and potentially important for the field; however, the key claim that polyQ HTT functionally disrupts the Golgi (Golgipathy) is incompletely supported by the data.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Synaptotagmin isoforms differentially regulate glutamate and GABA release in the lateral habenula

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Dustin N. White
   2. J. Keenan Kushner
   3. Kelly E. Winther
   4. Dillon J. McGovern
   5. Tamara Basta
   6. Zoe R. Donaldson
   7. Charles A. Hoeffer
   8. David H. Root
   9. Michael H. B. Stowell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper addresses a key question regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying GABA and glutamate release from co-releasing neurons projecting from the entopeduncular nucleus (EPN) to the lateral habenula (LHb) in mice. The authors conclude that the two neurotransmitters are released from separate vesicle pools and rely on distinct molecular machinery; these conclusions contrast with previous functional studies at the same synapse, suggesting that GABA and glutamate are co-packaged within the same vesicles. The study employs useful electrophysiological and imaging approaches, however, a key limitation is the use of Cre lines that also label a purely glutamatergic EPN population projecting to the LHb. This inadequate methodology complicates the interpretation of the data and weakens the central conclusions regarding neurotransmitter co-release mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Simplifying principles that underlie the highly complex peptide motif of the promiscuous chicken class I molecule, BF2*21:01

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Michael Harrison
   2. Paul E. Chappell
   3. Samer Halabi
   4. Maria Danysz
   5. Enock M. Mararo
   6. Łukasz Magiera
   7. Clemens Hermann
   8. Michael J. Deery
   9. Kathryn S. Lilley
   10. Hans-Joachim Wallny
   11. David W. Avila
   12. William Mwangi
   13. Venugopal Nair
   14. Susan M. Lea
   15. Nicola Ternette
   16. Jim Kaufman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates the peptide-binding principles of promiscuous chicken MHC molecules. The data from crystallography, mass spectrometry, and modeling are convincing. However, the presentation would benefit from streamlining and clear links between data and conclusions. This paper will be of broad interest to immunologists and those interested in vaccine development.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Head before heart: cognitive empathy emerges before affective empathy in the developing brain

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. C. Bulgarelli
   2. P. Pinti
   3. T. Bazelmans
   4. A. F. de C. Hamilton
   5. E.J.H. Jones

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors have presented a study which addresses a recognised gap in the literature, the emergence of the neural correlates of cognitive and affective empathy in children; they introduce a task for measuring both positive and negative empathy in a relatively large group of children aged 3-5. The task was combined with functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine brain regions involved in the task. The findings are interpreted as providing evidence for the earlier emergence of cognitive than affective empathy. The study represents a valuable contribution to understanding the development of cognitive function, but in its current form, the strength of support for the conclusion is incomplete due to limited support for the comparison to the adult literature and a need to more clearly justify the pre-selected brain regions, their links to empathy and the justification of the hypotheses.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The cistrome response to hypoxia in human umbilical vein endothelial cells

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Ayush Singh
   2. Viktor Pastukh
   3. Justin T. Roberts
   4. Zachary M. Turpin
   5. Zehta S. Glover
   6. Grant T. Daly
   7. Jane M. Benoit
   8. Mark N. Gillespie
   9. Hank W. Bass

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study that applies a new chromatin profiling technique to the study of cellular responses to low oxygen. The authors provide convincing evidence for distinct kinetic phases of the response and identify many new putative regulators of the response. This work will be of broad interest to those studying low oxygen responses and transcriptional regulation.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The Par complex regulates apical-basal cell polarity through modulation of FAK signaling homeostasis

   This article has 21 authors:

   1. Meiai He
   2. Lining Liang
   3. Yulu Wang
   4. Yongyu Chen
   5. Hao Sun
   6. Lin Guo
   7. Changpeng Li
   8. Jingcai He
   9. Yanhua Wu
   10. Shiyu Chen
   11. Tingting Yang
   12. Fei Meng
   13. Qiwen Ren
   14. Linna Dong
   15. Lin Liu
   16. Qianqian Zou
   17. Tianya Zhang
   18. Xinyue Hou
   19. Qing Guo
   20. Dajing Qin
   21. Hui Zheng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable finding that the Par polarity complex, but not Crumbs or Scrib, regulates morphological remodeling during the naive-to-primed transition of pluripotent stem cells, with later effects on differentiation and neural tube organoid lumen formation. The evidence is incomplete, as the developmental significance of the PAR KO phenotype requires clearer framing and deeper characterization, and the proposed signaling pathway is currently presented more strongly than the data support. The work will be of interest to developmental and stem cell biologists studying polarity, pluripotent-state transitions, epithelialization, and lumen formation.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Story about honest mistakes: The cyanobacterium Synechocystis has a promiscuous Entner-Doudoroff (ED) aldolase but no functional ED pathway

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Ravi Shankar Ojha
   2. Marius Theune
   3. Ruben Fritsche
   4. Alexander Makowka
   5. Marko Boehm
   6. Carmen Peraglie
   7. Christopher Bräsen
   8. Jacky L. Snoep
   9. Martin Hagemann
   10. Bettina Siebers
   11. Kirstin Gutekunst

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents fundamental results on the presence of the Entner-Doudoroff pathway in cyanobacteria. In contrast to an earlier study, compelling evidence is given that Synechocystis PCC 6803 lacks both an Entner-Doudoroff pathway and a related bypass but contains a promiscuous aldolase. This study successfully reconciles data from different studies and lessons learned from a previous misconception.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. SqueakPose Studio: An end-to-end platform for pose estimation and real-time edge-AI deployment

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. David L Haggerty
   2. Caleb B Darden
   3. David M Lovinger

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work introduces an integrated open-source platform for behavioral acquisition and pose estimation that substantially improves the accessibility and speed of real-time animal tracking workflows. The evidence supporting the utility and usability of SqueakPose Studio is compelling, particularly the substantial inference speed gains, intuitive graphical interface, flexible pose configuration, and successful testing on independent datasets, although the evidence supporting broader benchmarking claims and the hardware ecosystem surrounding MouseHouse and SqueakView remains somewhat incomplete. The study will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and behavioural researchers seeking scalable and user-friendly approaches for real-time behavioral analysis, and the work would be further strengthened by more rigorous benchmarking, expanded installation and hardware documentation, formal software release practices, and clearer delineation between demonstrated capabilities and future applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Dendritic delay lines shape the computation of sound location in neurons of the gerbil medial superior olive

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Jared Casarez
   2. Rebecca I Voglewede
   3. Bradley D Winters
   4. Ken Ledford
   5. Nace L Golding

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a fundamental study that clarifies the cellular mechanism of sound localization in the horizontal plane. The analysis of medial superior olivary neurons provides experimental and computational evidence for a new mechanism in which a range of asymmetric dendritic delays permits individual MSO neurons to represent the full range of biologically relevant ITDs. Using elegant 2-photon guided simultaneous recordings from distal dendrites and soma, along with compartmental modeling on anatomically reconstructed neurons, the authors provide compelling evidence that this mechanism contributes to microsecond-level tuning.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Benefit Transfer Loops Turn Cheating into a Scaffold for Microbial Diversity

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Jiqi Shao
    2. Yinxiang Li
    3. Shaohua Gu
    4. Xiaoyi Zhang
    5. Shaopeng Wang
    6. Xueming Liu
    7. Zhiyuan Li

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This manuscript provides a valuable perspective on microbial community diversity and how this is shaped by the presence of cheaters. The evidence provided is solid, and the methods used to assess the research question are convincing. However, a major weakness is the general framing (or lack of embedding in recent literature), reducing the usefulness of the paper for a broad audience.

    Reviewed by eLife