eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Macrodomain catalytic activity modulates Chikungunya virus dissemination and transmission potential in Aedes mosquitoes

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Eugenia S Bardossy
   2. Lena Bergmann
   3. Annabelle Henrion-Lacritick
   4. Jared Nigg
   5. Galen J Correy
   6. Alan Ashworth
   7. James S Fraser
   8. Maria-Carla Saleh

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates how viral macrodomains in dual-host viruses functionally contribute to their infection in the vector, which was previously understudied. The findings that chikungunya virus (CHIKV) macrodomain mutants have unique impacts on virus replication in mammalian cells and in live mosquitoes are convincing and significant; however, the study can be strengthened by further investigating the role of ADP-ribose binding and potential other compensatory mutations. The work will be of interest to virologists and biologists who study macrodomains and ADP-ribosylation.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Where you aim – not how you aim – affects implicit recalibration in visuomotor adaptation

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Yiyu Wang
   2. Jordan A Taylor

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigated whether the adoption of different explicit strategies influences implicit recalibration during visuomotor adaptation. Through a series of increasingly controlled experiments, the authors demonstrated that implicit recalibration is relatively insensitive to the specific type of explicit strategy employed but is influenced by the variability of strategic motor plans. However, the evidence supporting these conclusions is currently incomplete. The findings will be of interest to cognitive scientists studying motor control and its relationship to higher-level cognitive processes, provided that the key claims are supported by more rigorous analyses and experimental approaches.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Pupil and Neural Dynamics Reveal Belief-Dependent Decision Making Under Ambiguity

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yinuo Qin
   2. Nuttida Rungratsameetaweemana
   3. Nina Lauharatanahirun
   4. Paul Sajda

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a useful combined analysis of human behavior, pupillometry and EEG measures to probe differences in ambiguity assessment between individuals during value-based decision-making. Using computational models, the authors aim to test for distinct groups of participants that differ in the relationship between evidence accumulation, arousal, and neural decision-making computations. However, at present, the evidence for group differences in the physiological, neural, and behavioral profile of decision-making under uncertainty is incomplete, lacking an appropriate statistical test for group differences, and a more complete assessment of the modeling results on evidence accumulation in decision-making in this study is required to robustly characterize and interpret the results.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Targeting Lysosomal MCOLN1/TRPML1 Ion Channels to Alleviate Diabetes Mellitus via a Ca ²⁺ - CaMKKβ-AMPK pathway

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jiaxuan Zhu
   2. Zhaonan Pan
   3. Shijia Wang
   4. Haoxiang Zhang
   5. Qianhui Wang
   6. Zikai Jiang
   7. Yuyuan Wang
   8. Zongxian Ding
   9. Dan Li

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable evidence that activating a lysosomal signaling pathway lowers blood glucose in diabetic mice, pointing to a potential new strategy for treating metabolic disease. However, the evidence for the proposed mechanism is inadequate: the glucose transporter's movement and glucose uptake were not measured in the physiologically relevant tissue, and the measurement that was performed used an unconventional technique. As a result, whether this transporter-dependent pathway explains the glucose-lowering effect has not yet been established.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Mitochondrial-derived compartments buffer outer membrane protein load during acute mitochondrial adaptation

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Bo J Price
   2. Sai Sangeetha Balasubramaniam
   3. Adam L Hughes

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study advances our understanding of the physiological conditions that promote the formation of mitochondrial-derived compartments (MDCs). The genetically amenable yeast system allowed the authors to generate convincing data showing the rapid formation of MDCs under physiologically relevant conditions where the mitochondrial proteome needs to be expanded during metabolic remodeling. The identification of a key role for a yeast AMPK-related protein called Snf1 will be of interest for cell biologists and biochemists.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Distinct nanoscale membrane organizations of mucins and trans-sialidases in Trypanosoma cruzi

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Gonzalo Escalante
   2. Raquel Parada-Puig
   3. Lucia F. Lopez
   4. Alan M. Szalai
   5. Maria de los Milagros Camara
   6. Luciano A. Masullo
   7. Oscar E. Campetella
   8. Juan Mucci
   9. Fernando D. Stefani

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study uses dual-color super-resolution microscopy, quantitative clustering analyses and simulations, as well as biochemical approaches to investigate the nanoscale organization of mucins and trans-sialidases on the surface of Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease. The evidence supporting a non-uniform distribution of these molecules into segregated nanoclusters and a more ordered non-clustered population is solid. Overall, this work provides a generalizable analytical framework that can help understand how parasite surface proteins are spatially organized. The main remaining limitations concern the mechanistic basis of the proposed organization and the need to exclude possible effects of sample preparation before fixation.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Ferroptosis is executed through caspase-5 cleavage of gasdermin E in ovarian cancer cells

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Mahmuda Akter
   2. Lei Sun
   3. Cheng Chi
   4. Iram Hyder
   5. Zheng Fu
   6. Lingtao Jin
   7. Shuang Huang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     A regulated cell death pathway that intentionally causes ferroptosis has not been previously described. The authors describe a useful finding that the ferroptosis inducers ML162 and erastin induce caspase-5-mediated cleavage of GSDME in mesenchymal-like ovarian cancer cells, resulting in pore formation. The data supporting the main claims are incomplete. This work will be of interest to researchers who study regulated cell death.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Measurement and comparison of acoustic space use in vocalizations of humans and close primate relatives

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hans T Bilger
   2. Michael J Ryan
   3. Julia A Clarke

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important empirical analysis of the acoustic space of vocal repertoires across primates and humans, providing new data that challenge the widely held hypothesis that the expansion of the human vocal space, driven by modifications of the vocal tract, was a key prerequisite for the evolution of spoken language. The evidence is convincing in its technical implementation and acoustic measurements, offering helpful comparative insights into voiced vocalizations. However, the theoretical framing and interpretation would benefit from further discussion.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Super compensatory substitutions restore protein function and confer mutational robustness

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Wenhong Jiang
   2. Hengchuang Yin
   3. Saad S Khan
   4. Yiparemu Abuduhaibaier
   5. Lucas B Carey

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study identifies and characterizes a set of amino acid states that can rescue protein function in the presence of substantially deleterious mutations. Some of these super-compensatory substitutions also confer substantial mutational robustness, with broader implications for understanding epistasis, protein evolution, and protein engineering. The evidence is compelling, supported by a creative reanalysis of a large deep-mutational-scanning dataset, experimental validation, an in-depth investigation of the evolutionary implications, and structural mechanistic analysis.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. High basal autophagic activity in the brain revealed by systemic quantitative analysis using GFP-LC3-RFP mice

    This article has 7 authors:

    1. Yuki Kanda
    2. Tomoya Eguchi
    3. Hideaki Morishita
    4. Yutaro Hama
    5. Manabu Abe
    6. Kenji Sakimura
    7. Noboru Mizushima

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      The ability to measure autophagic flux in vivo in response to physiological stresses remains a challenge for investigators in the field; the novel mouse model present in this work is significant and should prove valuable to investigators in addressing shortcomings of existing models. In addition, the development of the microplate reader approach to permit semi-high-throughput analysis of samples is convincing and a significant advance. The application of these approaches to measuring autophagy in multiple tissues is appreciated but raises some questions that need to be answered and highlighted, including what new biological insight has been generated for tissues under study, how overall autophagy versus rates of flux are determined, and how the sex of the animal affects outcomes. The neuronal populations under study should be reassessed.

    Reviewed by eLife