eLife

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1. Phylogenetic Mosaic of an Arms Race with Asymmetrical Sexual Conflict and Its Macroevolutionary Consequences in a Lineage of Small Water Striders

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Zihe Li
   2. Huanyu Chen
   3. Zezhong Jin
   4. Hendrik Freitag
   5. Christine Hecher
   6. Herbert Zettel
   7. Siying Fu
   8. Chen Liu
   9. Mu Qiao
   10. Boxiong Guo
   11. Wenjun Bu
   12. Zhen Ye

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines the macroevolutionary patterns of male-female divergence driven by conflict over mating rate in a lineage of water striders called Pseudovelia, found in China. The authors used a convincing combination of phylogenetic reconstruction, morphological diversification and molecular evolution techniques to assess whether a correlation exists between the divergence of sexually antagonistic traits and species diversification. The study finds widespread conflict across the phylogeny of the clade and presents compelling evidence for the role of incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), introgression, and differential evolutionary rates of male and female antagonistic traits. Overall, the study offers a valuable contribution to our understanding of the link between phylogenetic patterns of ILS and introgression, and male-female phenotypic divergence shaped by conflict over mating interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Cutaneous inflammation accelerates the premalignant expansion of melanocytes bearing oncogenic mutations

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Diana Tran
   2. Anastasiia Vaska
   3. Tyler El Rayes
   4. Natalie Lovinger
   5. Yassmin A Elbanna
   6. Esther Lee
   7. Christin E Burd
   8. Jonathan H Zippin
   9. Morgan Huse

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important work, using preclinical models and reporting that a shared inflammatory and vascular leakage response following Treg depletion, UVB irradiation, and DNFB contact hypersensitivity facilitates outgrowth of premalignant melanocytes. However, some of the work to support the claims is incomplete; this pertains particularly to the quantification of melanocyte expansion and sample size inconsistencies. With some additional supporting evidence to strengthen the claims, the study will be of broad interest to cancer biologists and immunologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Genomic analysis of Klebsiella pneumoniae causing community-acquired respiratory deaths among Zambian infants and children using targeted RNA-probe hybridization-capture metagenomics

   This article has 28 authors:

   1. Kenneth Lindstedt
   2. Alyse Wheelock
   3. Mulemba Samutela
   4. Wasifa Kabir
   5. Mwelwa Chasaya
   6. Natasha Namuziya
   7. Emilia Jumbe Marsden
   8. Monica Kapasa
   9. Chibamba Mumba
   10. Bwalya Mulenga
   11. Lisa Nkole
   12. Rachel Pieciak
   13. Victor Mudenda
   14. Chilufya Chikoti
   15. Benard Ngoma
   16. Charles Chimoga
   17. Sarah Chirwa
   18. Lilian Pemba
   19. Diana Nzara
   20. James Lungu
   21. Leah Forman
   22. Edgar Simulundu
   23. William MacLeod
   24. Crispin Moyo
   25. Somwe Wa Somwe
   26. Kathryn E Holt
   27. Arnfinn Sundsfjord
   28. Christopher J Gill

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study reports the application of targeted RNA-probe hybridization-capture metagenomic sequencing to characterize Klebsiella pneumoniae detected in post-mortem lung tissue from infants and young children who died from respiratory illness in Lusaka, Zambia. The findings provide a convincing proof-of-concept for the use of targeted sequencing to recover clinically relevant genomic information from archived post-mortem tissue specimens. However, the evidence supporting broader epidemiological and public health conclusions should be interpreted with caution given the small number of cases, the limitations inherent to culture-independent sequencing, and the fact that the study was not designed to determine the source or setting of acquisition.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Volatile diacetyl triggers rapid fmo-2 expression through DHAP-glycerol shunt induction

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Marco Giorda
   2. Anamitra Sen
   3. Martin S Denzel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This potentially valuable work finds that exposure to the odor diacetyl in the worm C. elegans leads to changes in metabolic nutrient-responsive programs, inducing expression of genes that act in the DHAP-glycerol shunt followed by induction of the flavin-containing monooxygenase fmo-2. The genetic and multi-omic evidence is solid and is based on an extensive set of experiments; however, mechanistic support for underlying metabolic and redox changes remains incomplete without more comprehensive metabolic profiling. The mechanism through which diacetyl or its breakdown products is sensed did not involve known receptors of diacetyl, so it remains unknown whether sensory neurons are involved in these responses.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Mapping abstraction and metacognition onto distinct transdiagnostic symptom profiles

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Taiki Oka
   2. Yoshihiko Kunisato
   3. Kotaro Koizumi
   4. Misa Murakami
   5. Hugo Six
   6. Jessica E Taylor
   7. Aurelio Cortese

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines how abstraction and metacognition relate to transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology. It combines a reward-learning task, computational modelling and a large questionnaire. The evidence linking reduced metacognitive sensitivity to a compulsive hypersensitivity dimension is solid, but the evidence for the abstraction findings is currently incomplete. This work will be of interest to researchers studying metacognition and computational approaches to psychiatry.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Nutrient Microenvironments Reprogram Pigment Epithelium Metabolism and Phenotype

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Rayne R Lim
   2. Emily Zhao
   3. Daniel T Hass
   4. Yekai Wang
   5. Mark Eminhizer
   6. Davide Ortolan
   7. Sheldon Niernberger
   8. Aspen Tong
   9. Bree R Nelson
   10. Marcos Nazario
   11. Vishya Adipudi
   12. Kapil Bharti
   13. James B Hurley
   14. Jianhai Du
   15. Jennifer R Chao

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigated the effects of the nutrient microenvironment on key elements of cellular morphology, function, and metabolism in both human iPSC-derived and human fetal RPE cultures. The analysis compared commonly used iPSC-RPE media formulations (MEMα, DMEM-HG/F12 basal media), alongside human plasma-like medium (HPLM) in an effort to model a more physiologically relevant culture environment. The authors provide compelling evidence that standard culture media differ significantly in key aspects of retinal pigment epithelium biology, particularly regarding metabolic profiles. Further clarification of the biological replicates and data normalization methods will help maximize the impact of this manuscript.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Supervised Domain Adaptation Mitigates Cross-Ethnicity Prediction Error in Neuroimaging-Based Cognitive Prediction

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Farzane Lal Khakpoor
   2. William van der Vliet
   3. Jeremiah Deng
   4. Yue Wang
   5. Narun Pat

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides a useful investigation of machine learning approaches that can lessen potential gaps in the prediction of behaviour from brain imaging data across majority and minority samples. The authors provide incomplete evidence to suggest that domain adaptation methods can mitigate these gaps. The analysis would benefit from further testing of model generalisability and the inclusion of recommended workflows for how the tested approaches can be used in future research. This work will be of interest to scientists using machine learning in brain imaging.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. A molecular glue in plants: The lectin domain of LecRK-I.9 creates persistent plasma membrane – cell wall connections

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Denise S Arico
   2. Ugo Segura
   3. Annalisa Bellandi
   4. Claire Lionnet
   5. Marjolaine Martin
   6. Olivier Hamant
   7. Hervé Canut

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The cell wall and plasma membrane are tightly associated in plant cells, and even after plasmolysis, sites of strong contact remain between the plasma membrane and cell wall. Here, the authors provide solid data to implicate an Arabidopsis lectin-like receptor kinase in plasma-membrane-to-cell-wall contact sites, and propose that these attachment sites are of importance for plant resistance to hyperosmotic stress, yet the evidence remains incomplete without key controls. These important results broaden our view on dynamic modulation of plasma membrane topology and its physiological consequences.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. CD56dimCD16dim NK cells are the dominant effector cells against HIV-infected primary T-cells

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. William Howell
   2. Courtney Branch
   3. Jeffrey Ward
   4. Zachary Davis
   5. Emma Geatches
   6. Edward Barker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study compares the anti-HIV activity of human natural killer cell subsets and identifies CD56^dimCD16^dim cells as a potentially key effector population against HIV-infected autologous T cells. The evidence supporting the central conclusions seems incomplete because the interpretation may be substantially confounded by activation-induced CD16 downregulation, making it difficult to distinguish intrinsic functional differences from phenotypic changes that occur during target-cell engagement. Additional experiments using purified NK-cell subsets and appropriate controls would substantially strengthen the evidence supporting the major conclusions.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Reprogrammed peptidoglycan elongation reveals plasticity in bacterial growth modes

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Carolina Basurto De Santiago
    2. Isabella S Lin
    3. Beiyan Nan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This paper demonstrates that relocating the MreB-Rod complex to the poles of E. coli can reprogram cell-wall synthesis, causing cells to elongate through peptidoglycan incorporation at the poles rather than along the cell length. This is a valuable finding for understanding how bacterial growth can be spatially reprogrammed and provides insight into how distinct modes of bacterial growth might arise. However, the evidence is currently incomplete, particularly regarding the nature of the polar structures, their relationship to cell shape and growth, and the requirement for a pre-existing pole.

    Reviewed by eLife