eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Semantic representations in the visual cortex of blind and sighted humans

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Małgorzata Paczyńska
   2. Marta Urbaniak
   3. Marta Dębecka
   4. Łukasz Bola

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study offers valuable insights into brain responses to words in the visual cortex of blind and sighted individuals. However, the evidence supporting the authors' claims remains incomplete, and the conclusions would benefit from a more comprehensive characterization of the conceptual properties of the word stimuli. This work will be of broad interest to cognitive neuroscientists, psycholinguists, and neurologists investigating meaning representation in the brain.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. High cognitive violation of expectations is compromised in cerebellar ataxia

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Leonardo Daniel
   2. Eli Vakil
   3. William Saban

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable investigation provides new and solid evidence for a specific cognitive deficit in cerebellar degeneration patients. The authors use three tasks that modulate complexity and violations of cognitive expectations. They show specific slowing of reaction times in the presence of violations but not with task complexity. While some alternative interpretations of the results are possible and are discussed, the work provides a new, invaluable data point in describing the cognitive contribution of cerebellar processing.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Cancer–immune coevolution dictated by antigenic mutation accumulation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Long Wang
   2. Christo Morison
   3. Weini Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work presents a stochastic branching process model of tumour-immune coevolution, incorporating stochastic antigenic mutation accumulation and escape within the cancer cell population. They then used this model to investigate how tumour-immune interactions influence tumour outcome and the summary statistics of sequencing data of bulk and single-cell sequencing of a tumour. The evidence is compelling and the work will be of interest to cancer-immune biology fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Interdigitating Modules for Visual Processing During Locomotion and Rest in Mouse V1

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Andrew M Meier
   2. Rinaldo D D’Souza
   3. Weiqing Ji
   4. Edward B Han
   5. Andreas Burkhalter

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study shows that locomotion-related modulations in the mouse visual cortex are not uniform but primarily affect neurons in muscarinic receptor-negative patches, which receive projections from specific cortical areas. While the evidence is mostly solid, some uncertainties remain regarding the link between anatomical data and functional measurements. The study should be of interest to neuroscientists interested in state modulation of cortical function.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The title and authors for this article are not available from our external data provider yet:
   10.48550/arxiv.2401.07227v2

6. Neuropeptidergic circuit modulation of developmental sleep in Drosophila

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Chikayo Hemmi
   2. Kenichi Ishii
   3. Mana Motoyoshi
   4. Masato Tsuji
   5. Kazuo Emoto

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study investigates an emerging research field: the interaction between sleep and development. The authors used Drosophila larvae sleep as a study model and provide insight into how neuropeptide circuitry control sleep differentially between larvae and adult Drosophila. By using board range of behaviour and imaging methods and analysis, the authors provide a valuable investigation that demonstrates a larvae-specific sleep regulatory neural pathway of Hugin-PK2-Dilps in the Drosophila neurosecretory centre IPC. While some further text clarifications are still required, the revision presented convincing evidence supporting the claims with the new imaging data, sleep parametric analysis, and further clarification addressing the reviewers' comments.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Secreted small RNAs of Naegleria fowleri are biomarkers for diagnosis of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. A Cassiopeia Russell
   2. Joseph Dainis
   3. Jose Alexander
   4. Ibne Karim M Ali
   5. Dennis E Kyle

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The manuscript by Russell et al. investigates an important problem: the current lack of methods for early and accurate N. fowleri diagnosis, which is >95% fatal. The authors provide solid evidence that a small RNA secreted by N. fowleri is detectable in biological fluids like blood and urine in a mouse model, and is present in cerebrospinal fluid and blood for a limited number of patient samples. This could potentially help with earlier diagnosis, which could save lives.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Quantifying the shape of cells, from Minkowski tensors to p-atic orders

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Lea Happel
   2. Griseldis Oberschelp
   3. Valeriia Grudtsyna
   4. Harish P Jain
   5. Rastko Sknepnek
   6. Amin Doostmohammadi
   7. Axel Voigt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work describes a set of parameters that give a robust description of shape features of cells in tissues. The evidence for the usefulness of these parameters is solid. The work should be of interest for anybody analyzing epithelial dynamics, but more details about the analysis of experimental images are necessary and some streamlining of the text would increase the accessibility of the material for non-specialists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Differential spatial regulation and activation of integrin nanoclusters inside focal adhesions

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Sarah Keary
   2. Nicolas Mateos
   3. Felix Campelo
   4. Maria F Garcia-Parajo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this manuscript, the authors analyse the nanoscale localisation of α5β1 and αVβ3 integrins in integrin adhesion complexes (IAC) by dual-colour STORM and assess the spatial organisation at the nano and mesoscale of their main adaptors (paxillin, talin and vinculin). This is an important work that provides detailed analyses that reveal how elements of these complex structures are really organised at the nanoscale, an essential perspective for a better understanding of how IACs function and regulate mechanotransduction processes. The evidence presented is solid, with super-resolution imaging experiments conducted using a single, validated methodology and subsequent computational modelling that enabled a quantitative assessment of the resulting data.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Nim1-related kinases regulate septin organization and cytokinesis by modulating Hof1 at the cell division site

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Bindu Bhojappa
    2. Anubhav Dhar
    3. Bagyashree VT
    4. Jayanti Kumari
    5. Freya Cardozo
    6. Vaseef Rizvi
    7. Saravanan Palani

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study determines the functional requirements for localization and activity of S. cerevisiae septin-associated kinases using in vivo imaging, in vitro and in vivo protein-protein interaction assays, and an instructive in vivo "tethering" approach. In addition to confirming previous results, the study offers evidence that the septin-associated kinases may directly interact with the contractile ring machinery. Although the experiments appear to have been conducted correctly, the quantitative analysis of some experiments is incomplete and should be improved to strengthen the conclusions.

    Reviewed by eLife