Latest preprint reviews

1. Electrophysiology and Morphology of Human Cortical Supragranular Pyramidal Cells in a Wide Age Range

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Pál Barzó
   2. Ildikó Szöts
   3. Martin Tóth
   4. Éva Adrienn Csajbók
   5. Gábor Molnár
   6. Gábor Tamás

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Barzó et al. assessed the electrophysiological and anatomical properties of a large number of layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons in brain slices of human neocortex across a wide range of ages, from infancy to elderly individuals, using whole-cell patch clamp recordings and anatomical reconstructions. This large data set represents a valuable contribution to our understanding of how these properties change across the human lifespan, and although the results presented are convincing, analyzing the data by absolute age rather than age ranges as well as clarifying the methods used and some of the statistical approaches applied would strengthen the conclusions. The analysis of spine density requires additional biological replicates to support the conclusions stated. These data strengthen our understanding of how these properties change with age and will contribute to building more realistic models of human cortical function.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Photoreceptor loss does not recruit neutrophils despite strong microglial activation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Derek Power
   2. Justin Elstrott
   3. Jesse Schallek

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study by Power and colleagues is important as elucidating the dynamic immune responses to photoreceptor damage in vivo potentiates future work in the field to better understand the disease process. However the evidence supporting the authors' claims is incomplete. The current manuscript would further benefit from validating their conclusion with additional supporting data from earlier time points (6 to 12 hours), additional markers to characterize neutrophils, more n numbers to strengthen the analysis, and evaluation of immune responses in mice with a stronger laser ablation, as well as further evidence to distinguish resident microglia vs. infiltrating macrophages due to the BRB breakdown. The authors should reorganize the article to make it easier and more straightforward to follow.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. An altered cell-specific subcellular distribution of translesion synthesis DNA polymerase kappa (POLK) in aging neurons

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Mofida Abdelmageed
   2. Premkumar Palanisamy
   3. Victoria Vernail
   4. Yuval Silberman
   5. Shilpi Paul
   6. Anirban Paul

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Abdelmageed et al. demonstrate POLK expression in neurons and report an important observation that POLK exhibits an age-dependent change in subcellular localization, from the nucleus in young tissue to the cytoplasm in old tissue. Despite potentially exciting and novel findings, many of the authors' claims are provided with incomplete support (e.g. lack of validation of the POLK antibody, characterization of the subcellular compartment, etc).

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Reproducibility of in vivo electrophysiological measurements in mice

   This article has 41 authors:

   1. International Brain Laboratory
   2. Kush Banga
   3. Julius Benson
   4. Jai Bhagat
   5. Dan Biderman
   6. Daniel Birman
   7. Niccolò Bonacchi
   8. Sebastian A Bruijns
   9. Kelly Buchanan
   10. Robert AA Campbell
   11. Matteo Carandini
   12. Gaëlle A Chapuis
   13. Anne K Churchland
   14. M Felicia Davatolhagh
   15. Hyun Dong Lee
   16. Mayo Faulkner
   17. Berk Gerçek
   18. Fei Hu
   19. Julia Huntenburg
   20. Cole Hurwitz
   21. Anup Khanal
   22. Christopher Krasniak
   23. Christopher Langfield
   24. Guido T Meijer
   25. Nathaniel J Miska
   26. Zeinab Mohammadi
   27. Jean-Paul Noel
   28. Liam Paninski
   29. Alejandro Pan-Vazquez
   30. Noam Roth
   31. Michael Schartner
   32. Karolina Socha
   33. Nicholas A Steinmetz
   34. Karel Svoboda
   35. Marsa Taheri
   36. Anne E Urai
   37. Miles Wells
   38. Steven J West
   39. Matthew R Whiteway
   40. Olivier Winter
   41. Ilana B Witten

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors have provided a valuable addition to the literature on large-scale electrophysiological experiments across many labs. The evidence that the authors provided was incomplete - while some comparisons with analyses outside of the manuscript's approaches were provided, a more complete manuscript would have compared with alternative standardized analyses. In particular, alternative spike sorting metrics and the alternative of GLM-based analysis of data would have made the interpretation of the results clearer.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Bacteriophage infection drives loss of β-lactam resistance in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. My Tran
   2. Angel J Hernandez Viera
   3. Patricia Q Tran
   4. Charlie Y Mo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The manuscript explores how bacterial evolution in the presence of lytic phages modulates b-lactams resistance and virulence properties in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The work is useful as it identifies underlying mutations that may confer sensitivity to b-lactams and alter virulence properties. While the findings are generally convincing, additional experiments linking how particular mutations regulate phenotypic changes are required to improve the work mechanistically.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Location- and feature-based selection histories make independent, qualitatively distinct contributions to urgent visuomotor performance

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Emily E Oor
   2. Emilio Salinas
   3. Terrence R Stanford

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Oor and colleagues report the potentially independent effects of the spatial and feature-based selection history on visuomotor choices. They outline compelling evidence, tracking the dynamic history effects based on their extremely clever experimental design (urgent version of the search task). Their finding is of fundamental significance, broadening the framework to identify variables contributing to choice behavior and their neural correlates in future studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Reversion to sensitivity explains limited transmission of resistance in a hospital pathogen

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Kevin C Tracy
   2. Jordan McKaig
   3. Clare Kinnear
   4. Jess Millar
   5. Aaron A King
   6. Andrew F Read
   7. Robert J Woods

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study, which will be of interest to those studying the evolution and maintenance of antibiotic resistance, addresses the hypothesis that antibiotic resistance arising de novo during treatment will carry a higher fitness cost and will revert to susceptibility more readily than resistance that has been transmitted between hosts. There are, however, concerns that the 'putatively transmitted isolates' in this study do not necessarily represent resistant isolates that have been transmitted between hosts. The support for the central claim of different patterns of reversion between isolates with de novo resistance and putatively transmitted resistant isolates is currently incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Valence and Salience Encoding in the Central Amygdala

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Mi-Seon Kong
   2. Ethan Ancell
   3. Daniela M Witten
   4. Larry S Zweifel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful work reveals differential activity to food and shock outcomes in central amygdala GABAergic neurons. Solid evidence supports claims of unconditioned stimulus activity that changes with learning. However, the evidence regarding claims related to valence or salience signaling in these neurons is inadequate. This work will be of interest to neuroscientists studying sensory processing and learning in the amygdala.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Characterization of Postsynaptic Glutamate Transporter Functionality in the Zebrafish Retinal First Synapse Across Different Wavelengths

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Marco Garbelli
   2. Stephanie Niklaus
   3. Stephan CF Neuhauss

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study reveals that Excitatory Amino Acid Transporters play a role in chromatic information processing in the retina. The combination of (double) mutants, behavioral assays, immunohistochemistry, and electroretinograms provides solid evidence supporting the appropriately conservative conclusions. The work will be of interest to neurobiologists working on color vision or retinal processing.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Becker muscular dystrophy mice showed site-specific decay of type IIa fibers with capillary change in skeletal muscle

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Daigo Miyazaki
    2. Mitsuto Sato
    3. Naoko Shiba
    4. Takahiro Yoshizawa
    5. Akinori Nakamura

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The authors present three valuable transgenic models carrying three representative exon deletions of the dystrophin gene. The findings are supported by rigorous biochemical assays and state-of-the-art microscopy methods, although the evidence, while overall solid, is only partially developed, and some points could be improved.

    Reviewed by eLife