eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Autonomic reflex plasticity associates with time-dependent SUDEP susceptibility in a murine model with hyperactive stress circuits

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Sandy E. Saunders
   2. Kaylie E. Dow
   3. Grace E. Bostic
   4. Jeffery A. Boychuk
   5. Jamie L. Maguire
   6. Carie R. Boychuk

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings regarding cardiac and autonomic effects of seizures and epilepsy, with relevance to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). They present solid evidence that genetic deletion of the potassium-chloride co-transporter in hypothalamic corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons exacerbates bradycardia and enhances autonomic disturbances in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the evidence that this deletion produces chronic hyperexcitability of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis was incomplete, leaving a mechanistic gap. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists working on epilepsy, the HPA axis, and autonomic control.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Parallel Wires: A Conserved Principle of Contralateral-Ipsilateral Segregation in the Visual Corpus Callosum

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Jiaowen Wang
   2. Yanming Wang
   3. Yiping An
   4. Shishuo Chen
   5. Benedictor Alexander Nguchu
   6. Huan Wang
   7. Muhammad Mohsin Pathan
   8. Yueyi Yu
   9. Sinan Yang
   10. Ying-Qiu Zheng
   11. Yang Ji
   12. Hao Wang
   13. Yifeng Zhou
   14. Bensheng Qiu
   15. Xiaoxiao Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important cross-species study tests whether the corpus callosum contains parallel, segregated pathways for ipsilateral and contralateral visual-field information, rather than mixed inputs from the two hemispheres. A major strength is its use of a combination of high-field functional magnetic resonance inaging and Bayesian population receptive field (pRF) modelling in humans with viral tracing in mice to offer complementary evidence for pathway segregation. At present, the evidence supporting the authors' claims is incomplete and would benefit from ruling out potential confounds that could mimic tract segregation in the human white-matter pRF data and the mouse anatomical tracing results, and from sharpening claims about laminar specificity.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. A retinotopic reference frame for space throughout human visual cortex

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Martin Szinte
   2. Gilles de Hollander
   3. Marco Aqil
   4. Inês Veríssimo
   5. Serge Dumoulin
   6. Tomas Knapen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a useful study, bolstering our understanding of spatial reference frames of visual perception. The high-resolution data and sophisticated analyses confirm and enhance earlier findings that visual representations operate in a predominantly retinotopic reference frame throughout the visual hierarchy in the human cortex. However, these analyses are currently incomplete, leaving open the possibility that eye-position gain and or spatiotopic representations may also be present.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Identification of a somatic H3K23me3 methyltransferase SET-19 in C. elegans

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Mingjing Xu
   2. Zixue Fan
   3. Chaoyue Yan
   4. Xiangyang Chen
   5. Xinya Huang
   6. Chengming Zhu
   7. Minjie Hong
   8. Jiewei Cheng
   9. Xinhao Hou
   10. Shuju Li
   11. Mengfeng Li
   12. Yunyu Shi
   13. Meng Huang
   14. Shouhong Guang
   15. Xuezhu Feng

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides fundamental insight by identifying C. elegans SET-19 as a key enzyme that deposits H3K23me to somatic chromatin. The evidence is compelling, using a broad and modern toolkit of biochemical, genetic, and genome-wide analyses that consistently support the main claims. The significance of the study is further strengthened by the fact that H3K23me is an understudied histone modification, which is also conserved in mammals.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Nuclear CK1δ as a Critical Determinant of PER:CRY Complex Dynamics and Circadian Period

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Fidel E. Serrano
   2. Daniela Marzoll
   3. Bianca Ruppert
   4. Axel C. R. Diernfellner
   5. Michael Brunner

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines the subcellular dynamics of the mammalian circadian clock proteins PER2, CRY1, and CK1, providing solid evidence that CK1 modulates the PER2-CRY1 interaction and drives the cytoplasmic localization of PER2 complexes. This could play a key role in modulating transcriptional repression by PER2, CRY1, and CK that contributes to the molecular circadian clock. There are minor concerns regarding the overexpression of the clock proteins in this study.

     [Editors' note: this paper was previously reviewed by another journal.]

   Reviewed by eLife

6. The Ingestive Response Reflects Neural Dynamics in Gustatory Cortex

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Natasha Baas-Thomas
   2. Abuzar Mahmood
   3. Narendra Mukherjee
   4. Kathleen C Maigler
   5. Yixi Wang
   6. Donald B Katz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study addresses an important question in gustatory neuroscience by developing a machine-learning classifier to identify distinct ingestive orofacial movement subtypes from electromyographic recordings and relating their dynamics to population-level activity in the gustatory cortex. The evidence that transitions in cortical ensemble firing are temporally associated with reorganization of ingestive movement patterns is convincing, though some aspects of the behavioral classification and neural analyses require further validation and clarification. The work provides a technically innovative framework for linking neural state dynamics to the motor expression of taste-guided decisions.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. The causes and consequences of human-specific DNA methylation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Zhenzhen Ma
   2. Alexander L Starr
   3. David Gokhman
   4. Hunter B Fraser

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important examination of the role of cis-acting versus trans-acting genetic variation on DNA methylation divergence between humans and chimpanzees, including its consequences for gene expression. By differentiating fused interspecies tetraploid cell lines into multiple cell types, the study provides compelling evidence for the importance of cis-acting changes, but incomplete evidence that these changes are of importance for adaptive trait evolution in humans. This work will be of interest to biologists and evolutionary anthropologists studying the evolution and genetics of gene regulation, particularly in primates.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Geometry shapes cytoplasmic Cdk1 waves that drive cortical dynamics

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Daniel Cebrián-Lacasa
   2. Marcin Leda
   3. Andrew B. Goryachev
   4. Lendert Gelens

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study combines previously established mathematical models to investigate why cortical waves in starfish and Xenopus embryos propagate in opposite directions. The modeling results are solid and plausible, but remain experimentally untested. Improving the presentation and discussion of the results could make the study more accessible to a wider audience.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Synergistic Inhibition of Notch Signaling and Forced Cell Cycle Re-entry Drive Müller Glia Reprogramming in Uninjured Mouse Retina

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Baoshan Liao
   2. Chengshang Lyu
   3. Yuqing Jiang
   4. Shanggong Liu
   5. Waiho Wong
   6. Jiadong Zhang
   7. Hoyin Tsang
   8. Junxi Xie
   9. Lingxi Chen
   10. Qinrong Zhang
   11. Wenjun Xiong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study shows that combining forced cell cycle re-entry with Rbpj deletion enhances Müller glia dedifferentiation and promotes their conversion into retinal neuron-like cells in the uninjured mouse retina. It provides a valuable strategy for improving Müller glia-mediated neurogenesis and advancing regenerative potential in the mammalian retina. Overall, the data are convincing, but the conclusions would be strengthened by functional validation of the newly generated neurons and retinal performance, as well as an assessment of Müller glia long-term function and cell survival.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Are interphylum spiralian relationships resolvable?

    This article has 2 authors:

    1. Ana Serra Silva
    2. Maximilian J Telford

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study probes the long-standing failure to resolve evolutionary relationships between the classical "spiralian" taxa - i.e., annelids, molluscs, brachiopods, platyhelminths and nemerteans - and provides convincing evidence that the branches leading to them are so short as to be unreliable guides to their relationships. This, in turn, has wide-ranging implications for our understanding of animal body plan evolution and the interpretation of early animal fossils.

    Reviewed by eLife