eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. GATA6 regulates WNT and BMP programs to pattern precardiac mesoderm during the earliest stages of human cardiogenesis

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Joseph A Bisson
   2. Miriam Gordillo
   3. Ritu Kumar
   4. Neranjan de Silva
   5. Ellen Yang
   6. Kelly M Banks
   7. Zhong-Dong Shi
   8. Kihyun Lee
   9. Dapeng Yang
   10. Wendy K Chung
   11. Danwei Huangfu
   12. Todd Evans

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study investigates the function of a critical regulator of human early cardiac development. The convincing examination of GATA6 function is thorough and well-executed. The study will be of interest to scientists working on how the human heart acquires its identity.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Discriminating neural ensemble patterns through dendritic computations in randomly connected feedforward networks

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Bhanu Priya Somashekar
   2. Upinder Singh Bhalla

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable quantitative insights into the prevalence of functionally clustered synaptic inputs on neuronal dendrites. The simple analytical calculations and computer simulations provide solid support for the main arguments. The findings can lead to a more detailed understanding of how dendrites contribute to the computation of neuronal networks.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Regeneration following tissue necrosis is mediated by non-apoptotic caspase activity

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Jacob W Klemm
   2. Chloe Van Hazel
   3. Robin E Harris

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript reports fundamental discoveries on how necrotic cells contribute to organ regeneration through apoptotic signalling to produce cells with non-lethal apoptotic caspase activity that contribute to the regenerated tissue. These findings will be of broad interest to those who study wound repair and tissue regeneration. The strength of the evidence is solid and has been improved in the revised version.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Hierarchical cortical plasticity in congenital sight impairment

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Roni O Maimon-Mor
   2. Mahtab Farahbakhsh
   3. Nicholas Hedger
   4. Andrew T Rider
   5. Elaine J Anderson
   6. Geraint Rees
   7. Tomas Knapen
   8. Michel Michaelides
   9. Tessa M Dekker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study examines the stability and compensatory plasticity in the retinotopic mapping in patients with congenital achromatopsia. It provides convincing evidence for a stable mapping of the visual field in V1, alongside changes of the readout from V1 into V3, which shows revised receptive field location and size. This paper would be of interest to scientists studying the visual system, brain plasticity, and development.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Full factorial construction of synthetic microbial communities

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Juan Diaz-Colunga
   2. Pablo Catalan
   3. Magdalena San Roman
   4. Andrea Arrabal
   5. Alvaro Sanchez

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript introduces a new low-cost and accessible method for assembling combinatorially complete microbial consortia using basic laboratory equipment, which is a valuable contribution to the field of microbial ecology and biotechnology. The evidence presented is compelling, demonstrating the method's effectiveness through empirical testing on both synthetic colorants and Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

6. Odors drive feeding through gustatory receptor neurons in Drosophila

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Hongping Wei
   2. Thomas Ka Chung Lam
   3. Hokto Kazama

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study convincingly demonstrates that odors evoke a feeding response in Drosophila, mediated by gustatory receptors and observed as a proboscis extension. The evidence is comprehensive, encompassing behavior, functional imaging and electrophysiology. This important results on the molecular and cellular basis of multimodal integration across olfaction and gustation will be of interest for the study of chemosensation, sensory biology, and animal behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Age-dependent predictors of effective reinforcement motor learning across childhood

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Nayo M Hill
   2. Haley M Tripp
   3. Daniel M Wolpert
   4. Laura A Malone
   5. Amy J Bastian

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study tests the development of motor reinforcement learning from toddlerhood to adulthood, using a large online sample. They show that learning improves with age in a task that, like real-life movement, involves a continuous range of response options and probabilistic rewards, and link this shift to reduced movement variability and more efficient feedback-based learning through behavioural modeling. Simplifying the task with discrete actions and deterministic outcomes boosted younger children's performance, suggesting early learning is limited by spatial and probabilistic processing. The evidence is convincing, although future work may investigate more naturalistic movement.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. A humoral immune response to parasitoid wasps in Drosophila is regulated by JAK/STAT, NF-κB and GATA

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Shuyu Olivia Zhou
   2. Jonathan P Day
   3. Bart Deplancke
   4. Alexandre B Leitão
   5. Francis M Jiggins

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports an extensive analysis of the way a humoral immune response to parasitoid wasp is expressed and regulated, building on previous work from the authors on an anti-parasitoid effector lectin. The solid evidence uses two complementary approaches to show which innate immune pathways are involved in the regulation of the anti-parasitoid response. The evidence would be stronger if some analytical and related concerns can be addressed. The work will be of relevance to the community of investigators studying insect immune cells as well as researchers interested in host defense against parasitism.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. TopOMetry systematically learns and evaluates the latent dimensions of single-cell atlases

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Davi Sidarta-Oliveira
   2. Ana Domingos
   3. Licio A Velloso

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents TopOMetry, an important novel dimensionality reduction method that addresses a signficant challenge in the analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing data. The authors provide convincing evidence of the method's utility across various tasks, including estimating intrinsic dimensionalities and identifying cell types. The work would benefit from more rigorous validation and a reorganization of the text.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Prebiotic gas flow environment enables isothermal nucleic acid replication

    This article has 4 authors:

    1. Philipp Schwintek
    2. Emre Eren
    3. Christof Bernhard Mast
    4. Dieter Braun

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important work shows how a simple geophysical setting of gas flow over a narrow channel of water can create a physical environment that leads to the isothermal replication of nucleic acids. The work presents compelling evidence for an isothermal polymerase chain reaction in careful experiments involving evaporation and convective flows, complimented with fluid dynamics simulations. This work will be of interest to scientists working on the origin of life and more broadly, on nucleic acids and diagnostic applications.

    Reviewed by eLife