eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Synaptic enrichment and dynamic regulation of the two opposing dopamine receptors within the same neurons

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Shun Hiramatsu
   2. Kokoro Saito
   3. Shu Kondo
   4. Hidetaka Katow
   5. Nobuhiro Yamagata
   6. Chun-Fang Wu
   7. Hiromu Tanimoto

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study uses state-of-the-art methods to label endogenous dopamine receptors in a subset of Drosophila mushroom body neuronal types. The authors report that Dop1R1 and Dop2R receptors, which have opposing effects on intracellular cAMP, are present in axons termini of Kenyon cells, as well as those of two classes of dopaminergic neurons that innervate the mushroom body indicative of autocrine modulation by dopaminergic neurons. Additional experiments showing opposing effects of starvation on Dop1R1 and Dop2R levels in mushroom body neurons are consistent with a role for dopamine receptor levels increasing the efficiency of learned food-odour associations in starved flies. Supported by solid data, this is an important contribution to the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Synaptic deregulation of cholinergic projection neurons causes olfactory dysfunction across five fly Parkinsonism models

   This article has 15 authors:

   1. Ulrike Pech
   2. Jasper Janssens
   3. Nils Schoovaerts
   4. Sabine Kuenen
   5. Carles Calatayud Aristoy
   6. Sandra F Gallego
   7. Samira Makhzami
   8. Gert J Hulselmans
   9. Suresh Poovathingal
   10. Kristofer Davie
   11. Adekunle T Bademosi
   12. Jef Swerts
   13. Sven Vilain
   14. Stein Aerts
   15. Patrik Verstreken

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This is an important study demonstrating that anosmia in Parkinson's disease patients is due to dysfunction in cholinergic neurons. This study provides compelling evidence, using scRNA sequencing, that cholinergic olfactory projection neurons (OPN) are consistently affected in five different fruit fly models of Parkinson's disease, exhibiting synaptic dysfunction before the onset of motor deficits. Comparisons with scRNA sequencing of patients' human brain samples reveals similar synaptic gene deregulation in cholinergic neurons of patients. This study points the possibility that targeting cholinergic neurons could be a potential avenue for early diagnosis and intervention in PD.

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3. Repression of PRMT activities sensitize human homologous recombination-proficient ovarian and breast cancer cells to PARP inhibitor treatment

   This article has 21 authors:

   1. Youyou Zhang
   2. Mu Xu
   3. Jiao Yuan
   4. Zhongyi Hu
   5. Junjie Jiang
   6. Yanrong Sun
   7. Jie Huang
   8. Yuxin Wang
   9. Bingwei Wang
   10. Jianfeng Shen
   11. Meixiao Long
   12. Yi Fan
   13. Kathleen T Montone
   14. Janos Tanyi
   15. Sarah H Kim
   16. Omid Tavana
   17. Robert H Vonderheide
   18. Ho Man Chan
   19. Susan Domchek
   20. Lin Zhang
   21. Xiaowen Hu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a valuable and interesting finding that a combination of arginine methyltransferase inhibitors synergize with PARP inhibitors to eliminate ovarian and triple negative cancer cell lines in vitro and in vivo using preclinical mouse models. The data were collected and analyzed using solid and validated methodology and can be used as a starting point for the development of novel therapeutics. The work will be of broad interest to scientists working in the field of breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

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4. Reproducible, data-driven characterization of sleep based on brain dynamics and transitions from whole-night fMRI

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Fan Nils Yang
   2. Dante Picchioni
   3. Jacco A de Zwart
   4. Yicun Wang
   5. Peter van Gelderen
   6. Jeff H Duyn

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important work, leveraging state-of-the-art whole-night sleep EEG-fMRI methods, advances our understanding of the brain states underlying sleep and wakefulness. Despite a small sample size, the authors present convincing evidence for substates within N2 and REM sleep stages, with reliable transition structure, supporting the perspective that there are more than the five canonical sleep/wake states.

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5. Learning place cells and remapping by decoding the cognitive map

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Markus Borud Pettersen
   2. Vemund Schøyen
   3. Anders Malthe-Sørenssen
   4. Mikkel E Lepperød

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful modeling study shows how spatial representations similar to experiment emerge in a recurrent neural network trained on a navigation task by requiring path integration and decodability, but without relying on grid cells. The network modeling results are solid, although the link to experimental data may benefit from further development.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Ligand-coupled conformational changes in a cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channel revealed by time-resolved transition metal ion FRET

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Pierce Eggan
   2. Sharona E Gordon
   3. William N Zagotta

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study uses fluorescence lifetime imaging and steady-state and time-resolved transition metal ion FRET to characterize conformational transitions in the isolated cyclic nucleotide binding domain of a bacterial CNG channel. The data are compelling and support the authors' conclusions. The results advance the understanding of allosteric mechanisms in CNBD channels and have theoretical and practical implications for other studies of protein allostery. A limitation is that only the cytosolic fragments of the channel were studied.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Disparity in temporal and spatial relationships between resting-state electrophysiological and fMRI signals

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. Wenyu Tu
   2. Samuel Cramer
   3. Nanyin Zhang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study combines fMRI and electrophysiology in sedated and awake rats to show that LFPs strongly explain spatial correlations in resting-state fMRI but only weakly explain temporal variability. The authors propose that other, electrophysiology-invisible mechanisms contribute to the fMRI signal. The evidence supporting the separation of spatial and temporal correlations is convincing, and the authors consider alternative potential factors that could account for the differences in spatial and temporal correlation that were observed. This work will be of interest to researchers who study the mechanisms behind resting-state fMRI.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Trade-offs in modeling context dependency in complex trait genetics

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Eric Weine
   2. Samuel Pattillo Smith
   3. Rebecca Kathryn Knowlton
   4. Arbel Harpak

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     It is known from model organisms that genes' effects on traits are often modulated by environmental variables, but similar gene-by-environment (GxE) interactions have been difficult to detect using statistical analyses of genomic data, e.g., in humans. This study introduces a new framework to estimate gene-by-environment effects, treating it as a bias-variance tradeoff problem. The authors convincingly show that greater statistical power can be achieved in detecting GxE if an underlying model of polygenic GxE is assumed. This polygenic amplification model is a truly novel view with fundamental promise for the detection of GxE in genomic datasets, especially with continued development to detect more complex signals of amplification.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Thymic self-recognition-mediated TCR signal strength modulates antigen- specific CD8+ T cell pathogenicity in non-obese diabetic mice

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Chia-Lo Ho
   2. Li-Tzu Yeh
   3. Yu-Wen Liu
   4. Jia-Ling Dong
   5. Huey-Kang Sytwu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study addresses T cell receptor activation during autoreactive T cell development and how the strength of T cell receptor engagement in naïve cells can predispose T cells to develop into effector/memory T cells. The authors lead with solid results that are largely consistent with data in the field suggesting that, in comparison to their counterparts with relatively lower basal self-reactivity, naive CD5hi CD8 T cells in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice are poised for activation. They propose that diabetogenic T cells are preferentially found among the naive CD5hi CD8 T cell population. While the evidence does not fully support all the authors' conclusions, the data provide a foundation that sets up future studies.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Single-nucleus transcriptomics reveal the cytological mechanism of conjugated linoleic acids in regulating intramuscular fat deposition

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Liyi Wang
    2. Shiqi Liu
    3. Shu Zhang
    4. Yizhen Wang
    5. Yanbing Zhou
    6. Tizhong Shan

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This study provides valuable information on the single nucleus RNA sequencing transcriptome, pathways, and cell types in pig skeletal muscle in response to conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) supplementation. Based on the comprehensive data analyses, the data are considered compelling and provide new insight into the mechanisms underlying intramuscular fat deposition and muscle fiber remodeling. The study contributes significantly to the understanding of nutritional strategies for fat infiltration in pig muscle.

    Reviewed by eLife