eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Application of Engineered NK-92 Cell Extracellular Vesicles in the Treatment of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Yu Sun
   2. Zeyu Tang
   3. Mengting Guo
   4. Zimeng Zhai
   5. Zixian Wu
   6. Xia Wang
   7. Fang Li
   8. Weiling An
   9. Xiaowei Dou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study presents the first application of engineered NK-92 cell-derived extracellular vesicles displaying CD19 scFv for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The concept of using targeted extracellular vesicles as a "cell-free" alternative to CAR-T/CAR-NK therapies is good. However, the current results are incomplete and do not provide strong support for the experimental hypothesis, particularly with respect to EV purification, characterization, mechanistic validation, and adherence to current EV field standards. Several major concerns should be addressed to strengthen the translational relevance, reproducibility, and biological interpretation of the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A battery of image classification challenges reveals shared and distinct object categorization behavior across monkeys, humans, and deep networks

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Han Zhang
   2. Zhihao Zheng
   3. Jiaqi Hu
   4. Qiao Wang
   5. Mengya Xu
   6. Zhaojiayi Zhou
   7. Zixuan Li
   8. Gouki Okazawa

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides fundamental insights into the mechanisms of visual object categorization in primates through a scalable behavioral framework for assessing category learning and generalization in macaque monkeys. The evidence is compelling, based on extensive behavioral characterization, rigorous control experiments, and comprehensive comparisons with humans and computational models, although extending the model analyses to the secondary monkey experiments would further strengthen the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. DUAL: deep unsupervised simultaneous simulation and denoising for cryo-electron tomography

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Xiangrui Zeng
   2. Yizhe Ding
   3. Yueqian Zhang
   4. Mostofa Rafid Uddin
   5. Ali Dabouei
   6. Min Xu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a computational framework inspired by cycleGAN that enables denoising and realistic simulation of cryo-electron tomography data, addressing central challenges in tomogram cleaning, simulation, and downstream annotation. The approach coherently links several key problems in the field and demonstrates strong performance across benchmark datasets, with additional benefits for particle detection and missing-wedge completion, indicating broad relevance across electron tomography. The evidence is solid, with appropriate quantitative benchmarks and applications to diverse datasets supporting the main claims, although validation on additional, more recent tomograms would further strengthen the conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Ectopic hAMH-driven SOX17 expression induces hyperplastic Sertoli valve formation in mouse testes

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Xiao Han
   2. Aya Uchida
   3. Seohyeon Lee
   4. Kosuke Nakamura
   5. Katsuki Takahashi
   6. Tsutomu Endo
   7. Ayaka Yanagida
   8. Ryuji Hiramatsu
   9. Akihiko Kudo
   10. Masami Kanai-Azuma
   11. Yoshiakira Kanai

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study clearly demonstrates that Sox17 is key for the formation and function of the Sertoli valve, a transition region between the rete testis and seminiferous tubules, which remains an understudied domain of testicular biology. The supporting data are generally convincing but remain incomplete. This work will be of interest to reproductive biologists and andrologists who work on male fertility and men's health.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Wunen(s) help navigate Primordial Germ Cells by attenuating Hedgehog signaling

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Amrita Roy
   2. Adheena Elsa Roy
   3. Airat Ibragimov
   4. Juliana DaSilva
   5. Kundan Kumar
   6. Paul Schedl
   7. Siddhesh S Kamat
   8. Girish S Ratnaparkhi
   9. Girish Deshpande

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this valuable manuscript, the authors tackle a highly relevant question in biology: how cells integrate attractive and repulsive cues to achieve directed migration. They present solid data demonstrating that two wunen genes act as negative regulators of Hedgehog signalling, thereby enabling efficient primordial germ cell (PGC) migration in Drosophila embryos. Beyond its immediate scope, this work has broader implications, particularly for understanding key mechanisms underlying complex processes such as cancer metastasis, where the coordinated interpretation of guidance cues is critical.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. RegEvol: detection of directional selection in regulatory sequences through phenotypic predictions and phenotype-to-fitness functions

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Alexandre Laverré
   2. Thibault Latrille
   3. Marc Robinson-Rechavi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The focus of this manuscript is a computational procedure to reveal signatures of selection on transcription factor binding sites through assessing changes in predicted binding affinity, setting out to avoid biases inherent in previous tests. The general approach could become a valuable resource for the community that can also be used for a broader range of questions. However, in its current implementation, the methods are inadequate to sufficiently support the primary claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Developmental bias explains the evolutionary trend towards simple leaf shapes

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. James S Malone
   2. Nora S Martin
   3. Samuel HA von der Dunk
   4. Liliana M Dávalos
   5. Ard A Louis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This paper presents important findings on how the shapes of leaves might be biased towards simpler shapes due to biases in how variation is generated by developmental processes rather than selection. The authors present solid evidence that combines image analysis of a herbarium dataset and computational analysis of a model of leaf development. The paper should be of interest to diverse researchers, ranging from plant development to the evolution of complexity more broadly.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Dissecting oligogenic and polygenic indirect genetic effects through the lens of neighbor genotypic identity

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Yasuhiro Sato
   2. Kosuke Hamazaki

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study introduces a statistical model and accompanying software for jointly analysing how an organism's own genotype, and those of its neighbors, shape its traits (assessing both direct and indirect genetic effects), based on simulations and three datasets from plants. The implementation and its behavior on simulated data are solid, but the evidence that the approach is more powerful, more interpretable, or more novel than established alternatives is incomplete, because the authors do not benchmark against existing methods, nor validate the candidate genes they identify, nor test realistic scenarios in which neighbor effects are weaker than direct effects. The work will be of interest to quantitative geneticists and plant breeders studying competition among neighboring genotypes.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Connections across regional glymphatic clearance, neural activity and amyloid-β deposition in cortex

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Yifei Li
   2. Xiao Zhu
   3. Ying Zhou
   4. Xuting Zhang
   5. Ziyu Zhou
   6. Kai Wei
   7. Jianzhong Sun
   8. Min Lou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The framework of the study - with the integration of multiple levels of analysis, glymphatic MRI, transcriptomics, functional MRI, and public amyloid maps, in one framework - is clever. The assertion that regional amyloid vulnerability may depend not just on neural activity alone, but on whether clearance is appropriately matched to activity is an interesting and novel concept. However, the chosen approach to imaging glymphatic clearance relies on indirect inferences from a small subgroup. In its current form, the main conclusions of this study are therefore incompletely supported.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Intersecting experimental evolution and CRISPR screens to identify novel toxin resistance loci

    This article has 11 authors:

    1. Michele Marconcini
    2. Steeve Cruchet
    3. Srishti Goswami
    4. Raghuvir Viswanatha
    5. Matthew Butnaru
    6. Joydeep De
    7. Camilla Roselli
    8. Dafni Hadjieconomou
    9. Norbert Perrimon
    10. Stephanie E Mohr
    11. Richard Benton

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study advances our understanding of genes contributing to Drosophila resistance to octanoic acid, a primary toxin present in Morinda fruit, which is the natural host plant for Drosophila sechellia, a species that has become a model for understanding evolutionary specialization. The authors provide solid results from an original combination of experimental evolution and cell-based CRISPR screens. This work will be of interest to the Drosophila community and researchers interested in the genetic basis of polygenic traits.

    Reviewed by eLife