eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Glial betaPix is essential for blood vessel development in the zebrafish brain

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Shihching Chiu
   2. Qinchao Zhou
   3. Chenglu Xiao
   4. Linlu Bai
   5. Xiaojun Zhu
   6. Wanqiu Ding
   7. Jing-Wei Xiong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable manuscript presents findings supported by solid data to identify a surprising glia-exclusive function for betapix in vascular integrity and angiogenesis. The manuscript also describes the optimisation of a modified CRISPR-based Zwitch approach to generate conditional knockouts in zebrafish

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Molecular landscape of the mouse adrenal gland and adjacent adipose tissue by spatial transcriptomics

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Malgorzata Blatkiewicz
   2. Szymon Hryhorowicz
   3. Marta Szyszka
   4. Joanna Suszynska-Zajczyk
   5. Andrzej Plawski
   6. Adam Plewinski
   7. Andrea Porzionato
   8. Ludwik K. Malendowicz
   9. Marcin Rucinski

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study provides a spatial transcriptomic analysis of the mouse adrenal gland that could have implications for future research and applications. The authors present solid results that allow the dissection of the cell signalling pathways and cellular composition of different zones of the adrenal glands in the mouse model; they propose new zone-specific gene markers and specific intra- and inter-zonal signaling pathways based on receptor-ligand expression patterns. Their web tool is user-friendly and will be helpful for adrenal scientists; however, the validation of crucial results of the large dataset is necessary. There are also several contradictory results/interpretations, and the opportunity to dissect the sexually dimorphic gene expression pattern and mouse-human interspecies differences is a missed opportunity.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. SIRT2 protects against Japanese encephalitis virus infection in mice

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Perumal Arumugam Desingu
   2. Lavanya Dindi
   3. Krishnega Murugasamy
   4. Ankit Kumar Tamta
   5. Venketsubbu Ramasubbu
   6. Sukanya Raghu
   7. Amarjeet Shrama
   8. Raju S Rajmani
   9. Nagalingam R Sundaresan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study explores the role of SIRT2 in regulating Japanese encephalitis virus replication and disease progression in rodent models. The findings presented are novel as sirtuins are known for their roles in aging, metabolism, and cell survival, but have not been studied in the context of viral infections until recently. The evidence supporting the claims is solid, although additional experiments to further characterize the clinical outcomes and directly test the link between acetylated NF-kB and SIRT2 expression would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to biologists studying viruses, sirtuins, and inflammation.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Doubling dolutegravir dosage reduces the viral reservoir in ART-treated people with HIV

   This article has 16 authors:

   1. Céline Fombellida-Lopez
   2. Aurelija Valaitienė
   3. Lee Winchester
   4. Nathalie Maes
   5. Patricia Dellot
   6. Céline Vanwinge
   7. Aurélie Ladang
   8. Etienne Cavalier
   9. Fabrice Susin
   10. Dolores Vaira
   11. Marie-Pierre Hayette
   12. Catherine Reenaers
   13. Michel Moutschen
   14. Courtney V Fletcher
   15. Alexander O Pasternak
   16. Gilles Darcis

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable clinical trial compares the impact of dolutegravir intensification on longitudinal measures of total HIV DNA and day 84 measures of intact HIV DNA. The trial was well-designed, and the paper is easy to read and provides hypothesis generation-level evidence that treatment intensification might decrease intact HIV DNA level in some people after 3 months. The findings are solid, with significant limitations being that study endpoints and hypotheses were not precisely defined prior to the trial, and that effect size is limited and inconsistent across trial participants.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Species biology and demographic history determine species vulnerability to climate change in tropical island endemic birds

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Ratnesh Karjee
   2. Vikram Iyer
   3. Durbadal Chatterjee
   4. Rajasri Ray
   5. Kritika M Garg
   6. Balaji Chattopadhyay

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Tropical single-island endemic bird populations are particularly vulnerable to climate change. This study investigates genetic evidence of how such species dealt with climate change in the past as a possible predictor of how they will respond in the future, which could provide an important example for the fields of conservation genetics and island biogeography. The authors' integration of genomics and habitat modeling is commendable, but we find that the support for their conclusions is currently inadequate: some model parameter choices do not seem to reflect the biology of the studied species or to be well founded, which can cause misalignment of modeled dynamics with glaciation windows crucial for interpreting the study's results against its claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Cancer cells differentially modulate mitochondrial respiration to alter redox state and enable biomass synthesis in nutrient-limited environments

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Sarah M Chang
   2. Muhammad Bin Munim
   3. Sonia E Trojan
   4. Huel Cox
   5. Anna Shevzov-Zebrun
   6. Keene L Abbott
   7. Renee Chang
   8. Matthew G Vander Heiden

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents important findings on the relationship between nutrient availability and NAD/NADH levels, which in turn regulate biomass production in cancer cells. The authors provide convincing evidence to support their claims, offering insight into why it is difficult to predict which nutrients limit cancer cell growth: both cell type and nutrient availability together determine the oxidative capacity that constrains the synthesis of various metabolic intermediates. The manuscript will be of broad interest to researchers working in cancer and cell metabolism.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Epidermal resident memory T cell fitness requires antigen encounter in the skin

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Eric S Weiss
   2. Toshiro Hirai
   3. Haiyue Li
   4. Andrew Liu
   5. Shannon Baker
   6. Ian Magill
   7. Jacob Gillis
   8. Youran R Zhang
   9. Torben Ramcke
   10. Kazuo Kurihara
   11. The ImmGen Consortium OpenSource T cell Project
   12. David Masopust
   13. Niroshana Anandasabapathy
   14. Harinder Singh
   15. David Zemmour
   16. Laura K Mackay
   17. Daniel H Kaplan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript advances the prior finding that antigen recognition in the skill helps establish skin resident memory in CD8 T cells by elucidating the role of TGFBR3 in regulating CD8+ TRM skin persistence upon topical antigen exposure. Key novelty of the your work lies in generation and use of the CD8+ T cell-specific TGFBR3 knockout model, which allows them to demonstrate the role of TGFBR3 in fine tuning the degree of CD8+ T cell skin persistence and that TGFBR3 expression is promoted by CD8+ TRM encountering their cognate antigen upon initial skin entry. This is an important finding and is supported by convincing evidence. There are concerns about the use of FTY720 and the need to establish active TGFbeta limiting conditions to further test this working model.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Predicting human decision-making across task conditions via individuality transfer

   This article has 1 author:

   1. Hiroshi Higashi

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This revised paper provides a valuable and novel neural network-based framework for parameterizing individual differences and predicting individual decision-making across task conditions. The methods and analyses are solid yet could benefit from further validation of the superiority of the proposed framework against other baseline models. With these concerns addressed, this study would offer a proof-of-concept neural network approach to scientists working on the generalization of cognitive skills across contexts.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. When do measured representational distances reflect the neural representational geometry?

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Veronica Bossio Botero
   2. Nikolaus Kriegeskorte

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript makes important contributions to the methodology commonly used to assess representational structures in human and animal brain activity recorded using various techniques (especially fMRI). The evidence in the form of mathematical analysis and simulations is solid. The impact of this contribution could be improved by extending the simulations to assess the effects of violations of explicit and implicit assumptions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Perinatal environmental enrichment affects murine neonates’ brain structure before their active engagement with environment

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Malte S Kaller
    2. Clémence Ligneul
    3. Rylan Allemang-Grand
    4. Tie Yuan Zhang
    5. Jacob Ellegood
    6. Michael Meaney
    7. Jason P Lerch

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This is an important study that combines replications of findings and novel detailed MRI investigations to assess the impact of environmental enrichment and maternal behavior on mice brain structure at different stages of development. The results and evidence supporting the conclusions are convincing, but in detail, the interpretation is challenging, in particular due to inter-individual and inter-litter variability. The extent to which maternal care mediates the impact of enrichment on brain development during the perinatal period also remains unclear because behavior was observed only during short periods, and the performed analyses are still incomplete. This study will nevertheless be of significant interest to neuroscientists and researchers interested in neurodevelopment in relation to environmental factors because of its in-depth use of MRI to study brain plasticity in mice.

    Reviewed by eLife