eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. High-throughput development and characterization of new functional nanobodies for gene regulation and epigenetic control in human cells

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Jun Wan
   2. Abby R Thurm
   3. Sage J Allen
   4. Connor H Ludwig
   5. Aayan N Patel
   6. Lacramioara Bintu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript describes a valuable screening approach to identifying nanobodies with the potential to modulate gene expression via epigenetic regulators. While the concept is of interest and the screening strategy is well designed, the current evidence supporting mechanistic specificity remains incomplete.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Increased layer 5 Martinotti cell excitation reduces pyramidal cell population plasticity and improves learned motor execution

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Thawann Malfatti
   2. Anna Velica
   3. Jéssica Winne
   4. Barbara Ciralli
   5. Katharina Henriksson
   6. George Nascimento
   7. Richardson Leao
   8. Klas Kullander

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study addresses a critical and timely question regarding the role of a subpopulation of cortical interneurons (Chrna2-expressing Martinotti cells) in motor learning and cortical dynamics. However, while some of the behavior and imaging data are impressive, the small sample sizes and incomplete behavioral and activity analyses make interpretation difficult; therefore, they are insufficient to support the central conclusions. The study may be of interest to neuroscientists studying cortical neural circuits, motor learning, and motor control.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Sensitivity of the human temporal voice areas to nonhuman primate vocalizations

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Leonardo Ceravolo
   2. Coralie Debracque
   3. Thibaud Gruber
   4. Didier Grandjean

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study shows that regions of the human auditory cortex that respond strongly to voices are also sensitive to vocalizations from closely related primate species. The study is methodologically solid, though additional analyses - particularly those isolating the acoustic features that differentiate chimpanzee from bonobo calls - would further strengthen the conclusions. With additional analyses and discussions, the work has the potential to offer key insights into the evolutionary continuity of voice processing and would be of interest to researchers studying auditory processing and evolutionary neuroscience in general.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. TSvelo: Comprehensive RNA velocity by modeling the cascade of gene regulation, transcription and splicing

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Jiachen Li
   2. Zhe Wang
   3. Hong-Bin Shen
   4. Ye Yuan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable tool named TSvelo, a computational framework for RNA velocity inference that models transcriptional regulation and gene-specific splicing. The evidence supporting the claims of the authors is solid, although elaboration of the computational benchmark and datasets would have strengthened the study. The work will be of interest to computational scientists working in the field of RNA biology.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Geomagnetic and visual cues guide seasonal migratory orientation in the nocturnal fall armyworm, the world’s most invasive insect

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Yi-Bo Ma
   2. Gui-Jun Wan
   3. Yi Ji
   4. Hui Chen
   5. Bo-Ya Gao
   6. Dai-Hong Yu
   7. Eric J Warrant
   8. Yan Wu
   9. Jason W Chapman
   10. Gao Hu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study presents experimental evidence on how geomagnetic and visual cues are integrated in a nocturnally migrating insect. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling. The work will be of broad interest to researchers studying animal migration and navigation.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. P-body formation is required for yeast proliferation in the phyllosphere

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Fuka Sekioka
   2. Kosuke Shiraishi
   3. Miho Akagi
   4. Akari Habata
   5. Yumi Arima
   6. Yasuyoshi Sakai
   7. Hiroya Yurimoto

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study investigates the role of P-bodies in yeast proliferation and mRNA regulation within the phyllosphere, proposing that P-body assembly contributes to methanol metabolism and stress adaptation. The findings are of interest to researchers studying post-transcriptional gene regulation and microbial ecology in plants. However, the evidence is incomplete, as most experiments were performed under artificial conditions, relied on limited genetic validation, and were supported primarily by qualitative or low-resolution imaging.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Learning sequence-function relationships with scalable, interpretable Gaussian processes

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Juannan Zhou
   2. Carlos Martí-Gómez
   3. Samantha Petti
   4. David M McCandlish

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work introduces a family of interpretable Gaussian process models that allows us to learn and model sequence-function relationships in biomolecules. These models are applied to three recent empirical fitness landscapes, providing convincing evidence of their predictive power. The findings should be of interest to the community working on the sequence-function relationship, on epistasis, and on fitness landscapes.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Visuomotor mismatch EEG responses in occipital cortex of freely moving human subjects

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Magdalena Solyga
   2. Marek Zelechowski
   3. Georg B Keller

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study demonstrates that self-motion strongly affects neural responses to visual stimuli, comparing humans moving through a virtual environment to passive viewing. However, evidence that the modulation is due to prediction is incomplete as it stands, since participants may come to expect visual freezes over the course of the experiment. This study bridges human and rodent studies on the role of prediction in sensory processing, and is therefore expected to be of interest to a large community of neuroscientists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Ubiquitous predictive processing in the spectral domain of sensory cortex

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Eli Sennesh
   2. Jacob A Westerberg
   3. Jesse Spencer-Smith
   4. Andre Bastos

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors analyzed spectral properties of neural activity recorded using laminar probes while mice engaged in a global/local visual oddball paradigm. They found solid evidence for an increase in gamma (and theta in some cases) for unpredictable versus predictable stimuli, and a reduction in alpha/beta, which they consider evidence towards a "predictive routing" scheme. The study is overall important because it addresses the basis of predictive processing in the cortex, but some of the analytical choices could be better motivated, and overall, the manuscript can be improved by performing additional analyses.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Comprehensive characterization of human color discrimination thresholds

    This article has 8 authors:

    1. Fangfang Hong
    2. Ruby Bouhassira
    3. Jason Chow
    4. Craig Sanders
    5. Michael Shvartsman
    6. Phillip Guan
    7. Alex H Williams
    8. David H Brainard

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This important study describes a novel Bayesian psychophysical approach that efficiently measures how well humans can discriminate between colors across the entire isoluminant plane. The evidence was considered compelling, as it included successful model validation against hold-out data and published datasets. This approach could prove to be of use to color vision scientists, as well as to those who use computational psychophysics and attempt to model perceptual stimulus fields with smooth variations over coordinate spaces.

    Reviewed by eLife