eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Early Sleep-Dependent Sensory Gating in the Olfactory System

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Diego Serantes
   2. Diego Gallo
   3. Anttonella García
   4. Joaquín González
   5. Mateo Mendoza
   6. Patricia Lagos
   7. Pablo Torterolo
   8. Matías Cavelli

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a well-executed investigation into how the olfactory system disconnects from the environment during sleep and anesthesia, identifying a potential gating mechanism at the earliest synaptic stages of the olfactory bulb. The findings are important, as they challenge current theories by demonstrating that sensory gating occurs in non-thalamic pathways even under controlled airflow conditions. The strength of evidence is solid, supported by rigorous multimodal recordings, although the reliance on anesthetic models to draw conclusions about natural sleep is a limitation that requires further contextualization.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Polo-like kinase phosphorylation of the orphan kinesin KIN-G negatively regulates centrin arm biogenesis in Trypanosoma brucei

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Yasuhiro Kurasawa
   2. Qing Zhou
   3. Kyu Joon Lee
   4. Huiqing Hu
   5. Ziyin Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides new insight into the regulation of cell organization and division in Trypanosoma brucei through the control of a kinesin motor protein by a polo-like kinase. The authors present solid evidence from rigorous biochemical and imaging analyses showing that phosphorylation modulates kinesin function and cellular organization. However, direct in vivo evidence that PLK phosphorylates kinesin-G is lacking.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. The targeted cytosolic degradation of class I histone deacetylases is essential for efficient alphaherpesvirus replication

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Sheng-Li Ming
   2. Meng-Hua Du
   3. Jia-Ming Yang
   4. Ya-Di Guo
   5. Jia-Jia Pan
   6. Wei-Fei Lu
   7. Jiang Wang
   8. Lei Zeng
   9. Bei-Bei Chu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this study, the authors describe the degradation of HDACs in late HSV-1 infection and attempt to link this phenomenon to HDAC export to the cytoplasm and to DNA damage response. However, the evidence is incomplete, as many of the experiments are lacking in rigor. As a result, mechanistic links to the proposed model are weak.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Large scale prospective evaluation of co-folding across 557 Mac1-ligand complexes and three virtual screens

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Jongbin Kim
   2. Galen J Correy
   3. Brendan W Hall
   4. Moira M Rachman
   5. Olivier Mailhot
   6. Takaya Togo
   7. Ryan L Gonciarz
   8. Priyadarshini Jaishankar
   9. R Jeffrey Neitz
   10. Eric R Hantz
   11. Yagmur U Doruk
   12. Maisie GV Stevens
   13. Morgan E Diolaiti
   14. Rashad Reid
   15. Saumya Gopalkrishnan
   16. Nevan J Krogan
   17. Adam R Renslo
   18. Alan Ashworth
   19. Brian K Shoichet
   20. James S Fraser

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study addresses an important gap in drug discovery by delivering a rigorous, large-scale evaluation of widely used co-folding methods for predicting ligand-bound protein complexes and virtual screening. A key strength is the comprehensive benchmarking framework, which leverages structures and chemical compounds that were absent from the AI models training set, thereby providing particularly compelling and unbiased evidence of co-folding performance. The findings clearly delineate the complementary roles of deep learning-based co-folding and physics-based docking, offering practical guidance for their rational integration into drug discovery workflows. Although the conclusions are convincing, improvements in the test cases, presentation, and usability can further strengthen the overall impact.

   Reviewed by eLife, PREreview

5. Latent gene network expression underlies partial re-evolution of a polyphenic trait in the worker caste of ants

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Angelly Vasquez-Correa
   2. Johanna Arnet
   3. Travis Chen
   4. Ehab Abouheif

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study explores whether complex structures that are lost during evolution can re-evolve, which is a long-standing debate in evolutionary and developmental biology. The authors demonstrate that re-evolution can occur if the gene regulatory network that underlies the development of complex traits is maintained. The evidence supporting its conclusions is solid and the work will be of interest to those studying the evolution and development of complex traits.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Policy-Gradient Reinforcement Learning as a General Theory of Practice-Based Motor Skill Learning

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Adrian M Haith

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable computational study presents a conceptually simple and biologically plausible reinforcement-learning framework for motor learning based on policy-gradient methods. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, including rigorous mathematical derivations of learning rules for the mean and variance of motor commands and simulation results for three sets of experimental data, based on three different motor learning tasks from the literature. However, there is a lack of a clear description of the specific conditions under which this framework yields unique mechanistic insights or predictive values, hence falling short of qualifying as a "general theory of motor learning". The work will be of interest to researchers in computational motor learning and motor neuroscience.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Mosaic of somatic mutations in one of Earth’s largest organisms, Pando

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Rozenn M. Pineau
   2. Karen E. Mock
   3. Jesse Morris
   4. Vachel Kraklow
   5. Andrea Brunelle
   6. Aurore Pageot
   7. William C. Ratcliff
   8. Zachariah Gompert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study examines patterns of clonal reproduction and somatic mutations in 'Pando', a massive, quaking aspen clone consisting of ~47000 stems. Because the study relies on relatively low-coverage, reduced-representation genomic resequencing data for the detection of somatic mutations, the evidence provided for several of the primary conclusions about clone age and the relationship between mutation accumulation and geographic distance is incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Expression of specific var gene subtypes is differentially associated with severe malaria syndromes

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Henry Ndugwa
   2. Michelle Muthui
   3. J Alexandra Rowe
   4. Samson M Kinyanjui
   5. Cheryl Andisi Kivisi
   6. Abdirahman I Abdi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses a large cohort of clinical malaria cases collected over 18 years to address a critical knowledge gap regarding the role of PfEMP1 variants across distinct severe malaria syndromes. The conclusions are potentially of importance and interest to those who study malaria severity, but the evidence is incomplete, largely due to a lack of clarity on data inclusion and the correct use of statistical tests. More up-to-date data analysis methods would further strengthen the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Turning aging cells into a live vaccine: engineered senescent cancer cells with adjuvant celecoxib for immunotherapy

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Yuewei Wang
   2. Ante Ou
   3. Yanli Luo
   4. Yanrong Gao
   5. Yi Zhang
   6. Linxi Qin
   7. Yongzhuo Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a novel immunotherapy strategy for cancer. The authors develop a whole-tumor cell vaccine comprised of senescent tumor cells and a COX2 inhibitor in a hydrogel matrix. They present convincing evidence of the efficacy of this approach in preclinical models, demonstrating that prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) modulates the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP) toward an immunostimulatory state, although more mechanistic/functional work would strengthen their conclusions. This work is timely and will be of interest to immunologists and others interested in the development of novel cancer therapies.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Nerve Injury-Induced Protein 2 preserves lysosomal membrane integrity to suppress ferroptosis

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Jin Zhang
    2. Miranda Bustamante
    3. Yang Shi
    4. Ken-ichi Nakajima
    5. Xinbin Chen

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This fundamental work uncovers an unexpected lysosomal function for NINJ2 and links it to ferroptosis and cancer biology. The evidence supporting the conclusions appears to be convincing. Additional mechanistic clarification, particularly around the NINJ2-LAMP1 interaction and ferroptosis specificity, will further strengthen the manuscript. This work will be of general interest to the community of ferroptosis and cancer biology.

    Reviewed by eLife