eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Passive shaping of intra- and intercellular m6A dynamics via mRNA metabolism

   This article has 14 authors:

   1. David Dierks
   2. Ran Shachar
   3. Ronit Nir
   4. Miguel Angel Garcia-Campos
   5. Anna Uzonyi
   6. David Wiener
   7. Ursula Toth
   8. Walter Rossmanith
   9. Lior Lasman
   10. Boris Slobodin
   11. Jacob H Hanna
   12. Yaron Antebi
   13. Ruth Scherz-Shouval
   14. Schraga Schwartz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a fundamental finding on how levels of m6A levels are controlled, invoking a consolidated model where degradation of modified RNAs in the cytoplasm plays a primary role in shaping m6A patterns and dynamics, rather than needing active regulation by m6A erasers and other related processes. The evidence is compelling through its use of transcriptome-wide data and mechanistic modeling. Relevant for any reader with an interest in RNA metabolism, this new framework consolidates previous observations and highlights the importance of careful experimentation for evaluation m6A levels.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. CausalXtract, a flexible pipeline to extract causal effects from live-cell time-lapse imaging data

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Franck Simon
   2. Maria Colomba Comes
   3. Tiziana Tocci
   4. Louise Dupuis
   5. Vincent Cabeli
   6. Nikita Lagrange
   7. Arianna Mencattini
   8. Maria Carla Parrini
   9. Eugenio Martinelli
   10. Herve Isambert

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study represents a data processing pipeline to discover causal interactions from time-lapse imaging data, and convincingly illustrates it on a challenging application for the analysis of tumor-on-chip ecosystem data. The authors describe the raw data they used (imaging data), go through a step-by-step description on how to extract the features they are interested in from the raw data, and how to perform the causal discovery process. This paper tackles the problem of learning causal interactions from temporal data, which is applicable to many biological applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Regulation of lung cancer initiation and progression by the stem cell determinant Musashi

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Alison G Barber
   2. Cynthia M Quintero
   3. Michael Hamilton
   4. Nirakar Rajbhandari
   5. Roman Sasik
   6. Yan Zhang
   7. Carla Kim
   8. Hatim Husain
   9. Xin Sun
   10. Tannishtha Reya

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study shows a significant role for Mushashi-2 (Msi2) in lung adenocarcinoma. The authors provided solid data that support the requirement for Msi2 in tumor growth and progression, although the study would have been strengthened by including more patient samples and additional evidence regarding Msi2+ cells being more responsive to transformation. These findings are of interest to both the lung cancer and the RNA binding protein fields.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Robust variability of grid cell properties within individual grid modules enhances encoding of local space

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. William T Redman
   2. Santiago Acosta-Mendoza
   3. Xue-Xin Wei
   4. Michael J Goard

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study examines the variability in spacing and direction of entorhinal grid cells, providing convincing evidence that such variability helps disambiguate locations within an environment. This study will be of interest to neuroscientists working on spatial navigation and, more broadly, on neural coding.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. A general mechanism for initiating the bacterial general stress response

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Rishika Baral
   2. Kristin Ho
   3. Ramasamy P Kumar
   4. Jesse B Hopkins
   5. Maxwell B Watkins
   6. Salvatore LaRussa
   7. Suhaily Caban-Penix
   8. Logan A Calderone
   9. Niels Bradshaw

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines genetic analysis, biochemistry, and structural modeling to reveal new insights into how changes in protein-protein structure activate signal transduction as part of the bacterial general stress response. The data, which was collected using validated and standard methods, and its interpretations are convincing; however, to fully meet the title's promise, additional experimental evidence is needed to strengthen the proposed model and its potential application to other systems. This manuscript will be of broad interest to microbiologists, structural biologists, and cell biologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. CUTS RNA Biosensor for the Real-Time Detection of TDP-43 Loss-of-Function

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Longxin Xie
   2. Jessica Merjane
   3. Cristian A Bergmann
   4. Jiazhen Xu
   5. Shruthi Balasubramaniyan
   6. Bryan Hurtle
   7. Charleen T Chu
   8. Christopher J Donnelly

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study developed a new sensor for TDP-43 activity that is sensitive and robust that should strongly impact the field's ability to monitor whether TDP-43 is functional or not. The evidence, though limited to cell culture, is compelling and is the first demonstration that a GFP on/off system can be used to assess genetic TDP-43 mutants as well as loss of soluble TDP-43.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Multi-tissue network analysis reveals the effect of JNK inhibition on dietary sucrose-induced metabolic dysfunction in rats

   This article has 18 authors:

   1. Hong Yang
   2. Cheng Zhang
   3. Woonghee Kim
   4. Mengnan Shi
   5. Metin Kiliclioglu
   6. Cemil Bayram
   7. Ismail Bolar
   8. Özlem Özdemir Tozlu
   9. Cem Baba
   10. Nursena Yuksel
   11. Serkan Yildirim
   12. Shazia Iqbal
   13. Jihad Sebhaoui
   14. Ahmet Hacımuftuoglu
   15. Matthias Uhlen
   16. Jan Boren
   17. Hasan Turkez
   18. Adil Mardinoglu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors implement a valuable multi-tissue approach to dissect the physiologic consequences of JNK inhibition in parallel with dietary perturbation via sucrose. The conclusions of disrupted liver, muscle and adipose metabolism being central to these effects are solid, as they are supported by a combination of experimental dissection and network modeling approaches.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Isobaric crosslinking mass spectrometry technology for studying conformational and structural changes in proteins and complexes

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Jie Luo
   2. Jeff Ranish

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This manuscript presents a valuable new quantitative crosslinking mass spectrometry approach using novel isobaric crosslinkers. The data are solid and the method has potential for a broad application in structural biology if more isobaric crosslinking channels are available and the quantitative information of the approach is exploited in more depth.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Aberrant FGF signaling promotes granule neuron precursor expansion in SHH subgroup infantile medulloblastoma

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Odessa R Yabut
   2. Jessica Arela
   3. Hector G Gomez
   4. Jesse Garcia Castillo
   5. Thomas Ngo
   6. Samuel J Pleasure

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides valuable new insight into the role of Fgf signalling in SUFU mutation-linked cerebellar tumors and indicates novel therapeutic interventions via inhibition of Fgf signalling. The potential impact of this work is therefore very high and it is supported by solid evidence. However, due to current limitations in the full identification of the cell types secreting FGF5, and issues with robustness of evaluation of genetically engineered animals, the validation of some interpretations awaits future experiments.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Deciphering the preeclampsia-specific immune microenvironment and the role of pro-inflammatory macrophages at the maternal–fetal interface

    This article has 13 authors:

    1. Haiyi Fei
    2. Xiaowen Lu
    3. Zhan Shi
    4. Xiu Liu
    5. Cuiyu Yang
    6. Xiaohong Zhu
    7. Yuhan Lin
    8. Ziqun Jiang
    9. Jianmin Wang
    10. Dong Huang
    11. Liu Liu
    12. Songying Zhang
    13. Lingling Jiang

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study investigates the immune system's role in pre-eclampsia. The authors map the immune cell landscape of the human placenta and find an increase in macrophages and Th17 cells in patients with pre-eclampsia. Following mouse studies, the authors suggest that the IGF1-IGF1R pathway might play a role in how macrophages influence T cells, potentially driving the pathology of pre-eclampsia. There is convincing evidence in this study that will be of interest to immunologists and developmental biologists.

    Reviewed by eLife