eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. The Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex pangenome is small and shaped by sub-lineage-specific regions of difference

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Mahboobeh Behruznia
   2. Maximillian Marin
   3. Daniel J Whiley
   4. Maha Reda Farhat
   5. Jonathan C Thomas
   6. Maria Rosa Domingo-Sananes
   7. Conor J Meehan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This useful study analyzed 335 Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex genomes and found that MTBC has a closed pangenome with few accessory genes. The research provides solid evidence for gene presence-absence patterns which support the appending conclusions however, the main criticism regarding the dominance of genome reduction remains.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Dimer-monomer transition defines a hyper-thermostable peptidoglycan hydrolase mined from bacterial proteome by lysin-derived antimicrobial peptide-primed screening

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Li Zhang
   2. Fen Hu
   3. Zirong Zhao
   4. Xinfeng Li
   5. Mingyue Zhong
   6. Jiajun He
   7. Fangfang Yao
   8. Xiaomei Zhang
   9. Yuxuan Mao
   10. Hongping Wei
   11. Jin He
   12. Hang Yang

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This valuable study explores a new strategy of lysin-derived antimicrobial peptide-primed screening to find peptidoglycan hydrolases from bacterial proteomes. Using this strategy, the authors identified five peptidoglycan hydrolases from Acinetobacter baumannii, which they tested on various Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens for antimicrobial activity. The revised manuscript addressed most of the prior concerns, and the data presented are solid and will be of interest to microbiologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Habitat fragmentation mediates the mechanisms underlying long-term climate-driven thermophilization in birds

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Juan Liu
   2. Morgan W Tingley
   3. Qiang Wu
   4. Peng Ren
   5. Tinghao Jin
   6. Ping Ding
   7. Xingfeng Si

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study substantially advances our understanding of how habitat fragmentation and climate change jointly influence bird community thermophilization in a fragmented island system. The authors provide convincing evidence using appropriate and validated methodologies to examine how island area and isolation affect the colonization of warm-adapted species and the extinction of cold-adapted species. This study is of high interest to ecologists and conservation biologists, as it provides insight into how ecosystems and communities respond to climate change.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Ih block reveals separation of timescales in pyloric rhythm response to temperature changes in Cancer borealis

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Kyra Schapiro
   2. JD Rittenberg
   3. Max Kenngott
   4. Eve Marder

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study investigates neurobiological mechanisms underlying the maintenance of stable, functionally appropriate rhythmic motor patterns during changing environmental conditions - temperature in this study in the crab Cancer borealis stomatogastric central neural pattern generating circuits producing the rhythmic pyloric motor pattern, which is naturally subjected to temperature perturbations over a substantial range. The authors present compelling evidence that the neuronal hyperpolarization-activated inward current (Ih), known to contribute to rhythm control, plays a vital role in the ability of these circuits to appropriately adjust the frequency of rhythmic neural activity in a smooth monotonic fashion while maintaining the relative timing of different phases of the activity pattern that determines proper functional motor coordination transiently and persistently to temperature perturbations. This study will be of interest to neurobiologists studying rhythmic motor circuits and systems and their physiological adaptations.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Sequential replacement of PSD95 subunits in postsynaptic supercomplexes is slowest in the cortex

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Katie Morris
   2. Edita Bulovaite
   3. Takeshi Kaizuka
   4. Sebastian Schnorrenberg
   5. Candace T Adams
   6. Noboru Komiyama
   7. Lorena Mendive-Tapia
   8. Seth GN Grant
   9. Mathew H Horrocks

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study explores how cells maintain subcellular structures in the face of constant protein turnover, focusing on neurons, whose synapses must be kept stable over long periods of time for memory storage. Using proteins from knock-in mice expressing tagged variants of the synaptic scaffold protein PSD95, nanobodies, and multiple imaging methods, there is compelling evidence that PSD95 proteins form complexes at synapses in which single protein copies are sequentially replaced over time. This happens at different rates in different synapse types and is slowest in areas where PSD95 lifetime is the longest and long-term memories are stored. While of general relevance to cell biology, these findings are of particular interest to neuroscientists because they support the hypothesis put forward by Francis Crick that stable synapses, and hence stable long-term memories, can be maintained in the face of short protein lifetimes by sequential replacement of individual subunits in synaptic protein complexes.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Microstructural asymmetries of the planum temporale predict functional lateralization of auditory-language processing

   This article has 13 authors:

   1. Peipei Qin
   2. Qiuhui Bi
   3. Zeya Guo
   4. Liyuan Yang
   5. Haokun Li
   6. Peng Li
   7. Xinyu Liang
   8. Junhao Luo
   9. Xiangyu Kong
   10. Yirong Xiong
   11. Bo Sun
   12. Sebastian Ocklenburg
   13. Gaolang Gong

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors studied the relationship between structural and functional lateralization in the planum temporale region of the brain, whilst also considering the morphological presentation of a single or duplicated Heschl's gyrus. The analyses are compelling due to a large sample size, inter-rater reliability, and corrections for multiple comparisons. The associations in this important work might serve as a reference for future targeted-studies on brain lateralization.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Reconstructing voice identity from noninvasive auditory cortex recordings

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Charly Lamothe
   2. Etienne Thoret
   3. Régis Trapeau
   4. Bruno L Giordano
   5. Julien Sein
   6. Sylvain Takerkart
   7. Stephane Ayache
   8. Thierry Artieres
   9. Pascal Belin

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study used deep neural networks (DNN) to reconstruct voice information (viz., speaker identity), from fMRI responses in the auditory cortex and temporal voice areas, and assessed the representational content in these areas with decoding. A DNN-derived feature space approximated the neural representation of speaker identity-related information. The findings are valuable and the approach solid, yielding insight into how a specific model architecture can be used to relate the latent spaces of neural data and auditory stimuli to each other.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. A Kv2 inhibitor combination reveals native neuronal conductances consistent with Kv2/KvS heteromers

   This article has 10 authors:

   1. Robert G Stewart
   2. Matthew James Marquis
   3. Sooyeon Jo
   4. Brandon J Harris
   5. Aman S Aberra
   6. Verity Cook
   7. Zachary Whiddon
   8. Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy
   9. Michael Ferns
   10. Jon T Sack

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Some delayed rectifier currents in neurons are formed by the combination of Kv2 and silent subunits, KvS. However, we lack the tools to identify these heteromeric channels in vivo. In this important study by the Sack group, the authors identify a pharmacological tool that can reveal the presence of KvS subunits as components of the delayed rectifier potassium currents in selected neurons. The experimental evidence presented in the manuscript is compelling and represents a significant advance that should be of interest to a wide community of neuroscientists and channel physiologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. Human EEG and artificial neural networks reveal disentangled representations and processing timelines of object real-world size and depth in natural images

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Zitong Lu
   2. Julie Golomb

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines EEG, neural networks and multivariate pattern analysis to show that real-world size, retinal size and real-world depth are represented at different latencies. The evidence presented is convincing and the work will be of broader interest to the experimental and computational vision community.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. The TTLL10 polyglycylase is stimulated by tubulin glutamylation and inhibited by polyglycylation

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Steven W Cummings
    2. Yan Li
    3. Jeffrey O Spector
    4. Christopher Kim
    5. Antonina Roll-Mecak

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      In their study, Cummings et al. provide a valuable advance in understanding the hierarchical regulation of tubulin polyglycylation, demonstrating that TTLL8 initiates monoglycylation which is a prerequisite for TTLL10-mediated polyglycylation. The evidence supporting these mechanistic insights is solid, relying on a compelling combination of purified biochemical assays, mass spectrometry, and microscopy. The work is further valued for revealing an unexpected crosstalk between polyglycylation and polyglutamylation that ensures a balanced post-translational modification landscape for proper cilia function.

    Reviewed by eLife