eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Dynamic estimation of the attentional field from visual cortical activity

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ilona M Bloem
   2. Leah Bakst
   3. Joseph T McGuire
   4. Sam Ling

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study addresses a gap in our understanding of how the size of the attentional field is represented within the visual cortex. The evidence supporting the role of visual cortical activity is convincing, based on a novel modeling analysis of fMRI data. The results will be of interest to psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Planar cell polarity coordination in a cnidarian embryo provides clues to animal body axis evolution

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Julie Uveira
   2. Antoine Donati
   3. Marvin Léria
   4. Marion Lechable
   5. François Lahaye
   6. Christine Vesque
   7. Evelyn Houliston
   8. Tsuyoshi Momose

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This analysis of the formation of the oral-aboral body axis in cnidarians, the sister group of bilaterians, is a significant and fundamental contribution to the field of Wnt signalling and planar cell polarity, particularly in or understanding in gradient formation, non-canonical Wnt signalling and Wnt-Frizzled interactions in cnidarians. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling and has the potential to contribute to a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of Wnt signalling in cnidarians and metazoans in general. These findings, which are presented in a thoughtful and scholarly manner, will be of broad interest to developmental and evolutionary biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Myristoylated Neuronal Calcium Sensor-1 captures the preciliary vesicle at distal appendages

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Tomoharu Kanie
   2. Roy Ng
   3. Keene L Abbott
   4. Niaj Mohammad Tanvir
   5. Esben Lorentzen
   6. Olaf Pongs
   7. Peter K Jackson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     The identification of NCS1 as a distal appendage protein that captures preciliary vesicles has important implications for understanding the early steps of ciliary assembly. Furthermore, the work has important implications for the broader understanding of NCS1, which prior to this work was focused on roles in neurotransmission, but now must be considered in a broader context. The investigators used a variety of state-of-the-art methodologies, and the conclusions are convincingly supported by the experimental data. This work will be of interest to cell biologists studying ciliary assembly, human geneticists exploring the pathology of cilia as well as neurobiologists studying NCS1.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A hierarchical pathway for assembly of the distal appendages that organize primary cilia

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Tomoharu Kanie
   2. Beibei Liu
   3. Julia F Love
   4. Saxton D Fisher
   5. Anna-Karin Gustavsson
   6. Peter K Jackson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important and detailed study presents the most comprehensive view of the functional organization and requirements for a mother centriole's distal appendage in primary cilia assembly published to date. Crispr-knockouts and super-resolution microscopy analysis of the distal appendage proteins provides convincing evidence to support the claims of the authors. This work will be of high value to cell biologists and biophysicists working on the structure and function of the centrosome as well as human geneticists exploring ciliary pathology.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Online reinforcement learning of state representation in recurrent network supported by the power of random feedback and biological constraints

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Takayuki Tsurumi
   2. Ayaka Kato
   3. Arvind Kumar
   4. Kenji Morita

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this important study, the authors model reinforcement-learning experiments using a recurrent neural network. The work examines if the detailed credit assignment necessary for back-propagation through time can be replaced with random feedback. The authors provide solid evidence that the solution is adequate within relatively simple tasks.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Chronic RNA G-quadruplex accumulation in aging and Alzheimer’s disease

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Lena Kallweit
   2. Eric Daniel Hamlett
   3. Hannah Saternos
   4. Anah Gilmore
   5. Ann-Charlotte Granholm
   6. Scott Horowitz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The current human tissue-based study provides compelling evidence correlating hippocampal expressions of RNA guanine-rich G-quadruplexes with aging and with Alzheimer's Disease presence and severity. The results are fundamental and will rejuvenate our understanding of aging and AD's pathogenesis.

     [Editors' note: this paper was reviewed by Review Commons.]

   Reviewed by eLife, Review Commons

7. The primate Major Histocompatibility Complex as a case study of gene family evolution

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Alyssa Lyn Fortier
   2. Jonathan K Pritchard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important manuscript presents a thorough analysis of the evolution of Major Histocompatibility Complex gene families across primates. A key strength of this analysis is the use of state-of-the-art phylogenetic methods to estimate rates of gene gain and loss, accounting for the notorious difficulty to properly assemble MHC genomic regions. Overall the evidence for the authors' conclusions – that there is considerable diversity in how MHC diversity is deployed across species – is compelling.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Regulatory networks of KRAB zinc finger genes and transposable elements changed during human brain evolution and disease

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Yao-Chung Chen
   2. Arnaud Maupas
   3. Katja Nowick

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors present a software (TEKRABber) to analyze how expression of transposable elements (TEs) and TE silencing factors KRAB zinc finger (KRAB-ZNF) genes are correlated in experimentally validated datasets. TEKRABber is used to reconstruct regulatory networks of KRAB-ZNFs and TEs during human brain evolution and in Alzheimer's disease. The direction of the work is important, with potentially significant interest from others looking for a tool for correlative gene expression analysis across individual genomes and species. However, the reviews identified biases and shortcomings in the pipeline that could lead to an unacceptable number of false positive and negative signals and thus impact the conclusions, leaving the work in its current form incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. B cell expression of an enzymatic intermediary in ether lipid biosynthesis promotes antibody responses and germinal center size

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Sung Hoon Cho
   2. Marissa A Jones
   3. Kaylor Meyer
   4. David M Anderson
   5. Sergiy Chetyrkin
   6. M Wade Calcutt
   7. Richard M Caprioli
   8. Clay F Semenkovich
   9. Mark R Boothby

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides useful insights into the ways in which germinal center B cell metabolism, particularly lipid metabolism, affects cellular responses. The authors use sophisticated mouse models to convincingly demonstrate that ether lipids are relevant for B cell homeostasis and efficient humoral responses. The authors then conducted in vivo as well as in vitro experiments, thereby strengthening their conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Humans adapt rationally to approximate estimates of uncertainty

    This article has 2 authors:

    1. Erdem Pulcu
    2. Michael Browning

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study makes an important contribution by showing that humans adapt learning rates rationally to environmental volatility yet systematically misattribute noise as volatility, demonstrating approximate rationality with simplified internal models. The evidence is compelling, encompassing a cleverly designed volatility-versus-noise paradigm, innovative lesion-based comparisons between reinforcement-learning and degraded Bayesian Observer Models, and convergent behavioural and pupillometric data. Expanding formal model comparisons (e.g., BIC/AIC) and directly contrasting RL and Bayesian fits to physiological markers would further enhance the work, but these are minor limitations that do not detract from the core findings.

    Reviewed by eLife