eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Modeling and simulation of neocortical micro- and mesocircuitry (Part II, Physiology and experimentation)

   This article has 42 authors:

   1. James B Isbister
   2. András Ecker
   3. Christoph Pokorny
   4. Sirio Bolaños-Puchet
   5. Daniela Egas Santander
   6. Alexis Arnaudon
   7. Omar Awile
   8. Barros-Zulaica Natali
   9. Jorge Blanco Alonso
   10. Elvis Boci
   11. Giuseppe Chindemi
   12. Jean-Denis Courcol
   13. Tanguy Damart
   14. Thomas Delemontex
   15. Alexander Dietz
   16. Gianluca Ficarelli
   17. Mike Gevaert
   18. Joni Herttuainen
   19. Genrich Ivaska
   20. Weina Ji
   21. Daniel Keller
   22. James King
   23. Pramod Kumbhar
   24. Samuel Lapere
   25. Polina Litvak
   26. Darshan Mandge
   27. Eilif B Muller
   28. Fernando Pereira
   29. Judit Planas
   30. Rajnish Ranjan
   31. Maria Reva
   32. Armando Romani
   33. Christian Rössert
   34. Felix Schürmann
   35. Vishal Sood
   36. Aleksandra Teska
   37. Anil Tuncel
   38. Werner Van Geit
   39. Matthias Wolf
   40. Henry Markram
   41. Srikanth Ramaswamy
   42. Michael W Reimann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study reports a model of 8 somatosensory areas of the rat cortex consisting of 4.2 million morphologically and electrically detailed neurons. The authors carry out simulation experiments aimed at understanding how multiscale organization of the cortical network shapes neural activity. While the reviewers found the results to be solid, they note that they could have likely been obtained using a much smaller portion of the model. Nonetheless, the release of the modeling platform represents a significant contribution to the field by providing a valuable resource for the scientific community.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Assemblies, synapse clustering, and network topology interact with plasticity to explain structure-function relationships of the cortical connectome

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. András Ecker
   2. Daniela Egas Santander
   3. Marwan Abdellah
   4. Jorge Blanco Alonso
   5. Sirio Bolaños-Puchet
   6. Giuseppe Chindemi
   7. Dhuruva Priyan Gowri Mariyappan
   8. James B Isbister
   9. James King
   10. Pramod Kumbhar
   11. Ioannis Magkanaris
   12. Eilif B Muller
   13. Michael W Reimann

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study presents a biologically realistic, large-scale cortical model of the rat's non-barrel somatosensory cortex, investigating synaptic plasticity of excitatory connections under varying patterns of external activations and characterizing relations between network architecture and plasticity outcomes. The model offers an impressive level of biological detail, addressing many aspects of the cellular and network anatomy and properties, and investigating their relationships to the biologically plausible plasticity. The numerical simulations appear to be well executed and documented, providing an excellent resource to the community. The evidence supporting the main conclusions is solid with results being more observational in nature, and minor weaknesses relating to the lack of explanatory power of causal relationships and mechanisms.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Periosteal skeletal stem cells can migrate into the bone marrow and support hematopoiesis after injury

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Tony Marchand
   2. Kemi E Akinnola
   3. Shoichiro Takeishi
   4. Maria Maryanovich
   5. Sandra Pinho
   6. Julien Saint-Vanne
   7. Alexander Birbrair
   8. Thierry Lamy
   9. Karin Tarte
   10. Paul Frenette
   11. Kira Gritsman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study presents valuable insights into the role of periosteal stem cells in bone marrow regeneration. The evidence is convincing. The data broadly support their claims and in line with state-of-art methodology. Future study on their model will help to strengthen their discovery further.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Novel class IIb microcins show activity against Gram-negative ESKAPE and plant pathogens

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Benedikt M Mortzfeld
   2. Shakti K Bhattarai
   3. Vanni Bucci

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents important advances in the discovery and assessment of microcins that improve our understanding of their prevalence and roles. The bioinformatics analysis, expression, and antimicrobial assays are solid, although the diverging evaluations also indicated the need for additional support regarding the sequence analysis and validation to fully back some of the claims and conclusions. This study will appeal to researchers working on the discovery and analysis of novel peptide natural products.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Proteostasis modulates gene dosage evolution in antibiotic-resistant bacteria

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Chinmaya Jena
   2. Saillesh Chinnaraj
   3. Soham Deolankar
   4. Nishad Matange

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study explores the interplay between gene dosage and gene mutations in the evolution of antibiotic resistance. The authors provide compelling evidence connecting proteostasis with gene duplication during experimental evolution in a model system. This paper is likely to be of interest to researchers studying antibiotic resistance, proteostasis, and bacterial evolution.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Colony demographics shape nest construction in Camponotus fellah ants

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Harikrishnan Rajendran
   2. Roi Weinberger
   3. Ehud Fonio
   4. Ofer Feinerman

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an important finding that ant nest structure and digging behavior depend on ant age demographics for a ground-dwelling ant species (Camponotus fellah). By asking whether ants employ age-polyethism in excavation, the authors address a long-standing question about how individuals in collectives determine the overall state of the task they must perform. The experimental evidence that the age of the ants and the group composition affect the digging of tunnels is convincing, and their model is able to replicate the colony's excavation dynamics qualitatively, results that may prove to be a key consideration for interpreting results from other studies in the field of social insect behavior.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Oviductin sets the species-specificity of the mammalian zona pellucida

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Daniel de la Fuente
   2. Maria Maroto
   3. Yulia N Cajas
   4. Karina Canon-Beltran
   5. Raul Fernandez-Gonzalez
   6. Ana Munoz-Maceda
   7. Juana M Sanchez-Puig
   8. Rafael Blasco
   9. Paula Cots-Rodríguez
   10. Manuel Avilés
   11. Dimitrios Rizos
   12. Alfonso Gutierrez-Adan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study unravels the mechanisms underlying mammalian sperm-oocyte recognition and penetration, shedding light on cross-species interactions. It provides solid evidence that exposure of sperm to oviductal fluid or OVGP1 proteins from bovine, murine, or human sources imparts species-specific zona pellucida (ZP) recognition, ensuring that only sperm from the corresponding species can penetrate the ZP, regardless of its origin. These findings hold significant potential for reproductive biology, offering insights to enhance porcine in vitro fertilization (IVF), which frequently suffers from polyspermy, as well as advancing human IVF through improved intrinsic sperm selection.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. The conserved ATPase PCH-2 controls the number and distribution of crossovers by antagonizing their formation in Caenorhabditis elegans

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Bhumil Patel
   2. Maryke Grobler
   3. Alberto Herrera
   4. Elias Logari
   5. Valery Ortiz
   6. Needhi Bhalla

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study examining the role of conserved PCH-2 protein at different stages of C. elegans meiosis. The authors use elegant molecular genetic approaches to provide convincing evidence to support their claims. The work will be of interest to scientists studying meiosis, DNA recombination, and chromosome segregation.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. No effect of additional education on long-term brain structure, a preregistered natural experiment in thousands of individuals

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Nicholas Judd
   2. Rogier Kievit

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     A regression discontinuity analysis finds essentially no effect of 1 additional year of secondary education on brain structure in adulthood. This is a valuable finding that adds to the literature on the impact of education on brain health. While the finding is convincing on its own, as the analysis was pre-registered and very carefully conducted, the impact is limited as the manipulated variable only relates to a single additional year of education (remaining in education to 15 vs 16 years of age).

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Protein absorption in the zebrafish gut is regulated by interactions between lysosome rich enterocytes and the microbiome

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Laura Childers
    2. Jieun Park
    3. Siyao Wang
    4. Richard Liu
    5. Robert Barry
    6. Stephen A Watts
    7. John F Rawls
    8. Michel Bagnat

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      In this study, the authors use the zebrafish to investigate how the microbiome affects a specialized gut cell called the lysosome rich enterocyte. They use a combination of functional assays for protein absorption, gnotobiotic manipulations and single-cell RNA-seq. The findings in the paper are considered important and the results are convincing.

    Reviewed by eLife