eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Visible traits demonstrate that crispant founder mice can be used for phenotypic assessment

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Rebekah Tillotson
   2. Marina Gertsenstein
   3. Li-Hsin Chang
   4. Julie Ruston
   5. Fernando Bellido Molías
   6. Lauri G. Lintott
   7. Christine Taylor
   8. Philippe Gautier
   9. Lauryl M. J. Nutter
   10. Monica J. Justice

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study offers important methodological advances for CRISPR-based mutagenesis in mice, highlighting the potential of founder animals for early phenotypic characterization. The authors present convincing evidence, supported by rigorous experimental design, that "crispant" (F0) analysis in mice, despite prior concerns about genetic mosaicism, can be utilized to assess protein function.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Contrasting patterns of specificity and transfer in human odor discrimination learning

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xiaoyue Chang
   2. Huibang Tan
   3. Jiehui Niu
   4. Kaiqi Yuan
   5. Rui Chen
   6. Wen Zhou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This potentially important study explores the specificity of olfactory perceptual learning. In keeping with previous work, the authors found that learning to discriminate between two enantiomers does not generalize across the nostrils or to unrelated enantiomers, whereas learning to discriminate odor mixtures does generalize across the nostrils and to other odor mixtures, with this learning effect persisting over at least two weeks. While the evidence presented to support these findings is convincing, it remains unclear why the results differ for enantiomers and why training on odor mixtures generalizes to other odor mixtures.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Single Transcript Level Atlas of Oxytocin and the Oxytocin Receptor in the Mouse Brain

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Vitaly Ryu
   2. Anisa Gumerova
   3. Georgii Pevnev
   4. Funda Korkmaz
   5. Hasni Kannangara
   6. Liam Cullen
   7. Ronit Witztum
   8. Steven Sims
   9. Tal Frolinger
   10. Ofer Moldavski
   11. Orly Barak
   12. Jay J. Cao
   13. Daria Lizneva
   14. Ki A. Goosens
   15. Tony Yuen
   16. Mone Zaidi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental work substantially advances our understanding of OXT (oxytocin) neurons and OXTR (oxytocin receptor) expressions in mammalian brains using an advanced RNAscope at the single transcript level. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling using chromogenic assays and state-of-the-art microscopy. The work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and endocrinologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Adaptive variation in avian eggshell structure and gas conductance across elevational gradients?

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. David Ocampo
   2. Carlos Daniel Cadena
   3. Gustavo A. Londoño

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides evidence, albeit still incomplete, that high-elevation species lose water at slower rates than low-elevation species. The findings imply that egg physiology may be a factor limiting the distributional range of bird species. While this work reinforces the need for all life stages to be considered when evaluating physiological adjustment to climate change, the analyses as presented by the authors do not clearly highlight the specific impact of species differences in influencing these adjustments.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Cas9 ⁺ conditionally immortalized neutrophil progenitors as a tool for genome wide CRISPR screening for neutrophil differentiation and function

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Robyn M. Jong
   2. Krystal L. Ching
   3. Nicholas E. Garelis
   4. Alex Zilinskas
   5. Xammy Nguyenla
   6. Sagar Rawal
   7. Bianca C. Hill
   8. Bridget A. Luckie
   9. Lillian Shallow
   10. Jeffery S. Cox
   11. Gregory M. Barton
   12. Sarah A. Stanley

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this manuscript, Jong et al. provide and validate a very useful resource for performing CRISPR screenings to study neutrophil differentiation and function by generating Hoxb8 cells that constitutively express Cas9. This library-screening approach has the potential to improve on the established lentiviral CRISPR-Cas9 editing of Hoxb8 cells. However, the technical advances provided are only incremental and the results presented in this study do not significantly further our understanding of these cells, but rather provide a good validation of their Cas9+ modified version.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Predestined neutrophil heterogeneity in homeostasis varies in transcriptional and phenotypic response to Candida

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Allison K. Scherer
   2. Alex Hopke
   3. Shuying Xu
   4. Adam Viens
   5. Natalie J. Alexander
   6. Kyle D. Timmer
   7. Dakota Archambault
   8. Daniel Floyd
   9. Natalie J. Atallah
   10. Catherine Rhee
   11. Murat Cetinbas
   12. David T. Scadden
   13. Daniel Irimia
   14. David B. Sykes
   15. Ruslan I. Sadreyev
   16. Michael K. Mansour

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In their study, Scherer and colleagues aim to use analyses of single-cell clones of murine granulocyte monocyte progenitors that are conditionally immortalized, and analyses of neutrophils derived from those clones to characterize an experimental system for studying neutrophil heterogeneity. The multi-omic and functional analyses reported are valuable but the strength of the evidence presented in support of them is incomplete because the study lacks a rigorous demonstration that the neutrophil-like cells that they derive are fully mature neutrophils.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. End-to-end proteogenomics for discovery of cryptic and non-canonical cancer proteoforms using long-read transcriptomics and multi-dimensional proteomics

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Katarzyna Kulej
   2. Asher Preska Steinberg
   3. Jinxin Zhang
   4. Gabriella Casalena
   5. Eli Havasov
   6. Sohrab P. Shah
   7. Andrew McPherson
   8. Alex Kentsis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript describes a useful integrated proteogenomics pipeline to enable the discovery of novel peptides in cancer cell lines. The method combines long-read RNA sequencing with a multi-protease digestion and proteomics approach. The method is a further development of the authors' previous approaches to identify cancer-specific peptides; however, the current study focuses on a single cell line, and the characterization remains incomplete and lacks validation for candidate alterations. The manuscript will be of interest to scientists focusing on identifying unique alterations in cancer cells.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Endothelial TLR4 signaling drives tissue inflammation, Claudin-5 internalization, and vascular barrier breakdown in a mouse model of neonatal meningitis

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Philip V. Seegren
   2. Amir Rattner
   3. Philip M. Smallwood
   4. Jeremy Nathans

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study demonstrates that endothelial toll-like receptor 4 is a central regulator of leptomeningeal inflammation in the context of neonatal E. coli meningitis. The data are derived from cell type-specific gene knockout in mice as well as from cultured endothelial cells, and are generally solid, with only minor weaknesses in analysis and interpretation. This work is important as it advances our understanding of host cellular processes and molecular pathways underlying meningitis pathogenesis.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A mediterranean-mimicking diet harnesses gut microbiota–derived 3-IAA to rejuvenate T cell

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Xin Yu
   2. Wenge Li
   3. Hongfang Feng
   4. Zhiyu Li
   5. Hongmei Zheng
   6. Shengrong Sun
   7. Juanjuan Li
   8. Bei Li
   9. Qi Wu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study advances our understanding of how dietary patterns shape cancer immunity by identifying a link between a Mediterranean-mimicking diet, gut bacteria, and a metabolite that enhances anti-tumor immune responses. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is solid, based on carefully controlled diet experiments, measurements of gut-derived molecules, and functional immune analyses across multiple models, together with supportive observations in human data. The work will be of broad interest to biologists working on microbiota and cancer. However, there are several issues that the authors should address to improve the manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. TGF-β drives the conversion of conventional NK cells into uterine tissue-resident NK cells to support murine pregnancy

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Josselyn D. Barahona
    2. Liping Yang
    3. D. Michael Nelson
    4. Wayne M. Yokoyama

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The importance of uterine natural killer (NK) cells in reproductive success has been demonstrated in mice and humans; however, it is still unclear how uterine NK cells are developed. In this valuable manuscript, the authors provide convincing evidence that TGF-b signaling in NK cells supports normal pregnancy in mice by the conversion of conventional NK cells into uterine tissue-resident NK cells. There are some concerns about the paper, particularly around Figures 1A, 1C, and 2E.

    Reviewed by eLife