eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. MED26-enriched condensates drive erythropoiesis through modulating transcription pausing

   This article has 20 authors:

   1. Shicong Zhu
   2. Xiaoting Zhang
   3. Na Li
   4. Xinying Zhao
   5. Man Li
   6. Si Xie
   7. Qiuyu Yue
   8. Yunfeng Li
   9. Dong Li
   10. Fan Wu
   11. Zile Zhang
   12. Ziqi Feng
   13. Yiyang Zhang
   14. Wonhyung Choi
   15. Xinyi Jia
   16. Yuelin Deng
   17. Qi Hu
   18. Xingyun Yao
   19. Xiaofei Gao
   20. Hsiang-Ying Lee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study is important to show the role of MED26 in red cell formation. Linking transcription pausing with erythropoiesis is a key discovery. The data are solid although there are still spaces to improve. The in vivo data are limited by specificity concerns on their Cre model. Having RNA-seq, using more erythroid markers such as band3 and a4-integrin, and orthogonal validation with iPSC-erythropoiesis model will improve the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Emergence of power law distributions in protein-protein interaction networks through study bias

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. David B Blumenthal
   2. Marta Lucchetta
   3. Linda Kleist
   4. Sándor P Fekete
   5. Markus List
   6. Martin H Schaefer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript makes an important contribution to the understanding of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks by challenging the widely held assumption that their degree distributions uniformly follow a power law. The authors present convincing evidence that biases in study design, such as data aggregation and selective research focus, may contribute to the appearance of power-law-like distributions. While the power law assumption has already been questioned in network biology, the methodological rigor and correction procedures introduced here are valuable for advancing our understanding of PPI network structure.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Virus adaptation to heparan sulfate comes with capsid stability tradeoff

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Han Kang Tee
   2. Simon Crouzet
   3. Arunima Muliyil
   4. Gregory Mathez
   5. Valeria Cagno
   6. Matteo Dal Peraro
   7. Aleksandar Antanasijevic
   8. Sophie Clément
   9. Caroline Tapparel

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important work and it correlates capsid stability with mutations that promote heparan sulfate binding. The data is solid, but there is a need for further analysis and experiments to support the claims and to propose a more detailed mechanism that could explain how these mutations altered capsid stability.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Leveraging place field repetition to understand positional versus nonpositional inputs to hippocampal field CA1

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. William Hockeimer
   2. Ruo-Yah Lai
   3. Maanasa Natrajan
   4. William Snider
   5. James J Knierim

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is a valuable work that convincingly reveals that place cells in the hippocampus that exhibit repeated firing fields incorporate information about non-positional variables in each firing field. They reveal that individual firing fields of a single place cell can exhibit tuning to different head orientations, suggesting hippocampal neurons are flexible in terms of how they incorporate non-positional inputs.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Membrane binding properties of the cytoskeletal protein bactofilin

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Ying Liu
   2. Rajani Karmakar
   3. Maria Billini
   4. Wieland Steinchen
   5. Saumyak Mukherjee
   6. Rogelio Hernandez-Tamayo
   7. Thomas Heimerl
   8. Gert Bange
   9. Lars V Schäfer
   10. Martin Thanbichler

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study advances our understanding of how bactofilin cytoskeletal proteins associate with cell membranes by identifying and characterizing a conserved membrane-targeting sequence. The evidence is solid, with a well-integrated combination of mutagenesis, biophysical analysis, molecular simulations, and bioinformatics supporting the mechanistic model. The work will be of particular interest to microbiologists and structural biologists studying bacterial cytoskeletons and membrane-protein interactions.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Spatial frequency adaptation modulates population receptive field sizes

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Ecem Altan
   2. Catherine A Morgan
   3. Steven C Dakin
   4. D Samuel Schwarzkopf

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This well-designed study combining psychophysical and fMRI data presents a valuable finding regarding how adaptation alters spatial frequency processing in the cortex. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although inclusion of more participants and better quality of the fMRI data would have strengthened the study. The study will be of interest to cognitive and perceptual neuroscientists working on human and non-human primates.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Sequence action representations contextualize during early skill learning

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Debadatta Dash
   2. Fumiaki Iwane
   3. William Hayward
   4. Roberto F Salamanca-Giron
   5. Marlene Bönstrup
   6. Ethan R Buch
   7. Leonardo G Cohen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study asks how the neural representation of individual finger movements changes during the early periods of sequence learning. By combining a new method for extracting features from human magnetoencephalography data and decoding analyses, the authors provide solid evidence of an early, swift change in the brain regions correlated with sequence learning, including a set of previously unreported frontal cortical regions. The authors also show that offline contextualization during short rest periods is the basis for improved performance. Further confirmation of these results on multiple movement sequences would further strengthen the key claims.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Molecular characterization of gustatory second-order neurons reveals integrative mechanisms of gustatory and metabolic information

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Rubén Mollá-Albaladejo
   2. Manuel Jiménez-Caballero
   3. Juan Antonio Sanchez-Alcaniz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides valuable insights into the organization of second-order circuits of gustatory neurons, particularly in how these circuits integrate opposing taste inputs and are modulated by metabolic state to regulate feeding behavior. Through an elegant combination of complementary techniques, the authors identify the target neurons involved in gustatory integration. The evidence supporting their conclusions is convincing.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. A biofilm-tropic Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteriophage uses the exopolysaccharide Psl as receptor

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Brenna Walton
   2. Serena Abbodante
   3. Michaela Ellen Marshall
   4. Justyna M Dobruchowska
   5. Amani Alvi
   6. Larry A Gallagher
   7. Nikhil Vallikat
   8. Zhemin Zhang
   9. Daniel J Wozniak
   10. Edward W Yu
   11. Geert-Jan Boons
   12. Eric Pearlman
   13. Arne Rietsch

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study identifies a novel bacteriophage that can use the exopolysaccharide Psl of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to infect and disrupt biofilms. The work is convincing and suggests a novel approach to control biofilms that is relevant to researchers working on biofilms, specifically in Pseudomonas, on phage physiology and discovery, and on alternatives to controlling bacterial pathogens.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Endogenous FGFs drive ERK-dependent cell fate patterning in 2D human gastruloids

    This article has 9 authors:

    1. Kyoung Jo
    2. Zong-Yuan Liu
    3. Gauri Patel
    4. Zhiyuan Yu
    5. LiAng Yao
    6. Seth Teague
    7. Craig Johnson
    8. Jason Spence
    9. Idse Heemskerk

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This work is an important contribution to understanding the role of FGF signaling in the induction of primitive-like cells in a 2D system of human gastrulation. The authors provide compelling evidence showing that endogenous FGF ligands, acting through FGF receptors localized basolaterally, are determinant in the acquisition of specific cell fates. These observations will be of broad relevance to the FGF field.

    Reviewed by eLife