eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Microglia are required for developmental specification of AgRP innervation in the hypothalamus of offspring exposed to maternal high-fat diet during lactation

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Haley N Mendoza-Romero
   2. Jessica E Biddinger
   3. Michelle N Bedenbaugh
   4. Richard Simerly

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors provide a valuable contribution by documenting the role of microglia in pruning the axon terminals of AgRP neurons. The analysis of microglial axonal pruning is solid; however, the analysis of the effects inhibiting microglia on subsequent food consumption is not fully complete.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Increased listening effort and cochlear neural degeneration underlie speech-in-noise deficits in normal-hearing middle-aged adults

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Maggie E Zink
   2. Leslie Zhen
   3. Jacie R McHaney
   4. Jennifer Klara
   5. Kimberly Yurasits
   6. Victoria E Cancel
   7. Olivia Flemm
   8. Claire Mitchell
   9. Jyotishka Datta
   10. Bharath Chandresekaran
   11. Aravindakshan Parthasarathy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study aims to clarify the effects of cochlear neural degeneration on auditory processing in listeners with normal audiograms (sometimes referred to as 'hidden hearing loss'). The authors provide important new data demonstrating associations between cochlear neural degeneration, non-invasive assays of auditory processing, and speech perception. Based on a cross-species comparison, the findings pose compelling evidence that cochlear synaptopathy is associated with a significant part of hearing difficulties in complex environments.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. From histology to macroscale function in the human amygdala

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Hans Auer
   2. Donna Gift Cabalo
   3. Raúl Rodríguez-Cruces
   4. Oualid Benkarim
   5. Casey Paquola
   6. Jordan DeKraker
   7. Yezhou Wang
   8. Sofie Louise Valk
   9. Boris C Bernhardt
   10. Jessica Royer

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable contribution combines high-resolution histology with magnetic resonance imaging in a novel way to study the organisation of the human amygdala. The main findings convincingly show the axes of microstructural organisation within the amygdala and how they map onto the functional organisation. Overall, the approach taken in this paper showcases the utility of combining multiple modalities at different spatial scales to help understand brain organisation.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. A general framework for characterizing optimal communication in brain networks

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Kayson Fakhar
   2. Fatemeh Hadaeghi
   3. Caio Seguin
   4. Shrey Dixit
   5. Arnaud Messé
   6. Gorka Zamora-López
   7. Bratislav Misic
   8. Claus C Hilgetag

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors provide a compelling method for characterizing communication within brain networks. The study engages important, biologically pertinent, concerns related to the balance of dynamics and structure in assessing the focal points of brain communication. It will be of interest to researchers trying to dissect structure of complex interaction networks across scales, from cells to regions.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Parvalbumin interneuron ErbB4 controls ongoing network oscillations and olfactory behaviors in mice

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Bin Hu
   2. Chi Geng
   3. Feng Guo
   4. Ying Liu
   5. Ran Wang
   6. You-Ting Chen
   7. Xiao-Yu Hou

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides useful information on the potential role of ERbB4 expression in parvalbumin-positive cells on olfactory behaviour and circuit dynamics in the olfactory bulb. The question is timely and novel, and findings could shed light on the critical role that ErbB4 may play in modulating olfactory bulb cell function and olfactory perception. Although the authors use a comprehensive set of experiments for their analysis, the evidence is incomplete as many of the experiments are underpowered and the model for selective knockout of ErbB4 in olfactory parvalbumin cells is not validated.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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