eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. A genetic screen reveals dosage-sensitive effects of ASD genes and identifies domino as a regulator of synaptic and behavioral phenotypes

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Ellen Stirtz
   2. Zachary B Madaj
   3. Brejnev Muhire
   4. Robert Fillinger
   5. Joe Roy
   6. Dmitri Martirosov
   7. Daniel Bautista
   8. Sreeja Varanasi
   9. Adelheid Lempradl

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important large-scale behavioral and transcriptomic analysis of Drosophila that are heterozygous for putative loss-of-function alleles of homologs of human genes that have been linked to autism spectrum disorders. The authors consider 48 genes as hits from their screen, which show significant behavioral alterations in sleep, basal activity, and/or social behavior, and significant sexual dimorphism. The authors then focus on the domino/SRCAP gene as a candidate regulator of sleep, social behavior, transcriptional programs, and RNA splicing. The work generates a solid dataset and applies quantitative analytical approaches that may provide a useful resource for the field, yet the evidence presented remains incomplete because issues of genetic background need to be further addressed.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Structural basis for site-specific histone H3 acetylation-dependent regulation of RNAPII transcription through nucleosomes

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Takumi Oishi
   2. Suguru Hatazawa
   3. Tomoya Kujirai
   4. Sae Suzuki
   5. Koki Nakatsu
   6. Gosuke Hayashi
   7. Junko Kato
   8. Yuki Kobayashi
   9. Mitsuo Ogasawara
   10. Haruhiko Ehara
   11. Shun-ichi Sekine
   12. Yoshimasa Takizawa
   13. Hitoshi Kurumizaka

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript describes a valuable study of the mechanism by which acetylation on the histone H3 core domain regulates RNA polymerase II transcription passing through nucleosomes. The authors provide convincing evidence that acetylation influences transcription in a context-specific fashion. Some questions relating to the static nucleosome structures and the polymerase passage remain, but this manuscript will be of considerable interest to researchers in the chromatin and transcription fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Germline-somatic residue synergy reshapes antibody encounter-state pathways to enhance HIV-1 recognition

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Sangita Kachhap
   2. Yishak Bililign
   3. Jared Lindenberger
   4. Carrie Saunders
   5. Priyamvada Acharya
   6. Rory Henderson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study provides a mechanistic view of how antibody affinity maturation can reshape encounter-state landscapes and association pathways, with implications for understanding HIV antibody maturation and vaccine design. The results are solid, supported by a coherent integration of adaptive molecular dynamics, Markov state modeling, SPR kinetics, mutagenesis, and double-mutant cycle analysis, although aspects of the kinetic validation, MSM-state robustness, and causal interpretation would benefit from further support. The work will be of interest to immunologists, structural biologists, and computational biophysicists.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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