eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Kinesin-1 holoenzyme assembly coordinates cargo-adaptor recognition with heavy-chain autoinhibition

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Jingling Niu
   2. Mengmeng Zhang
   3. Liping He
   4. Xiaojie Zhu
   5. Mingming Liu
   6. Jiasheng Chen
   7. Wenli Jiang
   8. Chao Wang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Nui and colleagues tackle several questions concerning the assembly of the heterotetrameric kinesin-1 complex, examining intermolecular interactions between KHC and KLC and KHC with the cargo adaptor TRAK2. Aspects of the study using computational models and biopysical/biochemical analysis to examine the interaction between KHC and KLC and KHC and TRAK2 are useful, alongside an interesting new model for modulation of TRAK2 binding by KLC. The study will be of great interest to the community, but currently it is incomplete, with some claims partially supported.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Functional maturation in abducens motoneurons populations during angular VOR larval development

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Mathilde Pain
   2. Marie Boulain
   3. Laura Cardoit
   4. Marie-Jeanne Cabirol
   5. Jean Forgue
   6. Martin Gorges
   7. Gilles Courtand
   8. Stefan Glasauer
   9. François M Lambert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The study makes a valuable contribution to understanding the development of reflexes responsible for gaze stabilization. Using a combination of behavioural, electrophysiological and imaging approaches and analyses in developing Xenopus tadpoles, the findings provide a convincing demonstration that maturation of the angular vestibulo-ocular reflex in larval tadpoles involved increased modulation of silent but not spontaneously firing abudens motor units during horizontal semicircular canal activation, as well as increased myelination and innervation of the lateral rectus motor nerve. The findings will set the stage for future investigations to uncover the mechanistic underpinnings of the current observation.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Integrin-dependent trafficking of CD98hc reduces endocytic noise to maintain metabolic homeostasis

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. F Sila Rizalar
   2. Hans Peter Grimm
   3. Angelique Augustin
   4. Jose L Garcia-Cordero
   5. Roberto Villaseñor

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study offers an important set of findings on a previously unrecognised mechanism by which integrin-dependent trafficking, notably the recycling of CD98hc from endosomes to the plasma membrane, controls the abundance of a major amino acid transporter at the cell surface, with implications for a stable amino acid supply and metabolic homeostasis. The approach and results are convincing in showing the trafficking steps involved, although the experimental analysis is in places incomplete and would benefit from more rigorous approaches, deeper mechanistic characterisation, and stronger links to metabolic homeostasis. With these aspects strengthened, the work would be of interest to cell biologists working on trafficking and amino acid metabolism, as well as to the cancer cell metabolism community.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Open and Hybridized: The Topology of Chloroplast Barrel Proteins

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Emily Proctor
   2. Daniel Montezano
   3. Matthew M. Copeland
   4. Joanna S. G. Slusky

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This work presents a computational resource for identifying and classifying chloroplast outer envelope membrane β-barrel proteins (COB) across a broad range of plant species. By substantially expanding the available sequence space for this proteome, the COB database will serve as a potentially important resource for researchers working in diverse areas, including chloroplast protein import, outer envelope membrane biology, and membrane protein evolution. Although the computational framework and broad comparative analyses are generally solid, the limitations of the negative training set and the similarity-based sequence expansion approach may require further implementation. In addition, some of the broader biological implications need to be more carefully addressed, as they remain to be validated experimentally.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Global Nernstian astrocytic depolarization breaks down during local synaptic input

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Ryo J Nakatani
   2. Erik De Schutter

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors use a modeling approach to examine the effects of local and global perturbations on the electrophysiological properties of astrocytes: their modeling results suggest that local ionic changes associated with synaptic activity alter the membrane potential in fine distal processes but not in the soma. The work is valuable because it addresses a long-standing question in the field regarding key electrophysiological properties of astrocytes. The conclusions are convincing, but the manuscript would benefit from providing more details about the assumptions underlying the model and from incorporating more realistic astrocyte morphologies into the simulations.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Dynamin 2–dependent endocytosis differentially regulates ligand and receptor contributions to Notch signaling during neural precursor cell fate determination

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Joshua J Breunig
   2. Jon I Arellano
   3. Gibum Kim
   4. Kenoma Anighoro
   5. C Danielle Antonuk
   6. Rachelle Levy
   7. Aslam A Akhtar
   8. Jessica Molina
   9. Masato Torii
   10. Kazue Hashimoto-Torii
   11. Sophia Fertuzinhos
   12. Martin H Dominguez
   13. Laura Grigereit
   14. Moise Danielpour
   15. Pasko Rakic

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study examines the role of Dynamin-2 in regulating neural progenitor behavior and fate by regulating Notch ligand and receptor function. Whilst the study is of interest because of the importance of these questions, the analyses are incomplete, and there are significant areas requiring additional experimentation in order to provide full confidence in the findings.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Female acoustic signaling of sexual immaturity depresses male courtship in Drosophila

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Martin Bernet
   2. Anne C von Philipsborn

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study characterizes wing flicking in sexually immature Drosophila melanogaster females as a rejection response behavior that produces patterned acoustic signals and suppresses male courtship. The authors combine behavioral and acoustic measurements with manipulations of sensory input and targeted neuronal populations to provide solid evidence for how sexual maturation is signaled. With some clarification, additional information, and a more cautious interpretation of the findings in the discussion, this study will be of interest to neurobiologists and ethologists studying sexual maturation and behavior and will open up opportunities to address questions across several distinct areas, including sexual dimorphism, sexual maturation, and even the evolution of sexual signals.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Spatial Compartmentalization of TCR Repertoires Between Primary Melanomas and Sentinel Lymph Nodes Reveals Distinct Clonal Architectures and Shared Antigen Recognition

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Simo Kitanovski
   2. Nalini Srinivas
   3. David Schrama
   4. Daniel Hoffmann
   5. Jürgen C Becker

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides a valuable analysis of T cell receptor repertoire organization in paired primary melanomas and sentinel lymph nodes from treatment-naive patients. The evidence for differences in repertoire architecture between these compartments is solid, but the evidence linking TCR sequence features and sequence-based communities to specific tumor antigens, particularly neoantigens, is incomplete. Additional benchmarking and robustness analyses of the community-based approach, together with more cautious interpretation of antigen specificity, would strengthen the study.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Mouse models with human antibody repertoires for inducing multiple lineages of HIV-1 broadly neutralizing antibodies

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Ming Tian
   2. Hwei-Ling Cheng
   3. Jillian Davis
   4. Lily M Thompson
   5. Aimee Chapdelaine Williams
   6. Marie-Elen Tuchel
   7. Audrey Yin
   8. Lawrence Jianqiao Hu
   9. Xin Lin
   10. Adam Yongxin Ye
   11. Frederick W Alt

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study advances the HIV-1 vaccine development field by establishing six humanized immunoglobulin knock-in mouse models to facilitate the design and evaluation of HIV-1 vaccines. The evidence supporting the claims is compelling, with robust genetic engineering and rigorous baseline sequencing data, while additional assessment of BCR pairing, expression, and repertoire diversity would round out the characterization of these models. These mice offer the field a rich resource to evaluate vaccine candidates that induce broadly neutralizing antibodies against major epitopes of the HIV-1 envelope protein.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Dual reinforcement-learning network modules for modeling decision-making with multiple strategies

    This article has 3 authors:

    1. Hayato Maeda
    2. Shuo Wang
    3. Akihiro Funamizu

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study presents a computational model of meta-learning that bridges two known neural mechanisms of learning: through activation dynamics and through synaptic plasticity. The evidence that the model is a good match to data from a mouse perceptual decision-making task is convincing, but the evidence that it also matches data from a widely studied human multistep decision-making task is incomplete. This work will be of broad interest to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists studying reinforcement learning and decision making.

    Reviewed by eLife