eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. An Intranet of Things approach for adaptable control of behavioral and navigation-based experiments

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. John C Bowler
   2. George Zakka
   3. Hyun Choong Yong
   4. Wenke Li
   5. Bovey Rao
   6. Zhenrui Liao
   7. James B Priestley
   8. Attila Losonczy

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Bowler et al. present a software/hardware system for behavioral control of navigation-based virtual reality experiments, particularly suited for pairing with 2-photon imaging but applicable to a variety of techniques. This system represents a valuable contribution to the field of behavioral and systems neuroscience, as it provides a standardized, easy to implement, and flexible system that could be adopted across multiple laboratories. The authors provide compelling evidence of the functionality of their system by reporting benchmark tests and demonstrating hippocampal activity patterns consistent with standards in the field. This work will be of interest to systems neuroscientists looking to integrate flexible head-fixed behavioral control with neural data acquisition.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Evolutionary rescue of spherical mreB deletion mutants of the rod-shape bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25

   This article has 11 authors:

   1. Paul Richard J Yulo
   2. Nicolas Desprat
   3. Monica L Gerth
   4. Barbara Ritzl-Rinkenberger
   5. Andrew D Farr
   6. Yunhao Liu
   7. Xue-Xian Zhang
   8. Michael Miller
   9. Felipe Cava
   10. Paul B Rainey
   11. Heather L Hendrickson

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study combines convincing evolution experiments with molecular and genetic techniques to study how a genetic lesion in MreB that causes rod-shaped cells to become spherical, with concomitant deleterious fitness effects, can be rescued by natural selection. The detailed mechanistic investigation increases our understanding of how mreB contributes to cell wall synthesis and shows how compensatory mutations may reestablish its homogeneity.

   Reviewed by eLife, Arcadia Science

3. Intracellular Expression of a Fluorogenic DNA Aptamer Using Retron Eco2

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Mahesh A Vibhute
   2. Corbin Machatzke
   3. Saskia Krümpel
   4. Malte Dirks
   5. Katrin Bigler
   6. Daniel Summerer
   7. Hannes Mutschler

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents a method for expressing single-stranded DNA fluorescent aptamers in E. coli using a retron-based strategy. The evidence supporting the successful expression and folding of DNA aptamers is solid, with clear demonstration of fluorescence after extraction, though the aptamers do not function in living cells. The method represents an important technical advance that will likely become standard for DNA aptamer expression in bacterial systems.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Conservation of the cooling agent binding pocket within the TRPM subfamily

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Kate Huffer
   2. Matthew CS Denley
   3. Elisabeth V Oskoui
   4. Kenton J Swartz

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this valuable study, Huffer et al posit that non-cold sensing members of the TRPM subfamily of ion channels (e.g., TRPM2, TRPM4, TRPM5) contain a binding pocket for icilin that overlaps with the one found in the cold-activated TRPM8 channel. After examining a body of TRP channel cryo-EM structures to identify the conserved site, this study presents convincing electrophysiological evidence supporting the presence of an icilin binding pocket within TRPM4. This study shows that icilin has modulatory effects on the TRPM4 channel and will be of direct interest to those working in the TRP-channel field, but it also has implications for studies of somatosensation, taste, as well as pharmacological targeting of the TRPM subfamily.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Adventitial fibroblasts direct smooth muscle cell-state transition in pulmonary vascular disease

   This article has 25 authors:

   1. Slaven Crnkovic
   2. Helene Thekkekara Puthenparampil
   3. Shirin Mulch
   4. Valentina Biasin
   5. Nemanja Radic
   6. Jochen Wilhelm
   7. Marek Bartkuhn
   8. Ehsan Bonyadi Rad
   9. Alicja Wawrzen
   10. Ingrid Matzer
   11. Ankita Mitra
   12. Ryan D Leib
   13. Bence Miklos Nagy
   14. Anita Sahu-Osen
   15. Francesco Valzano
   16. Natalie Bordag
   17. Matthias Evermann
   18. Konrad Hoetzenecker
   19. Andrea Olschewski
   20. Senka Ljubojevic-Holzer
   21. Malgorzata Wygrecka
   22. Kurt Stenmark
   23. Leigh M Marsh
   24. Vinicio de Jesus Perez
   25. Grazyna Kwapiszewska

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental research conducted a molecular comparison between smooth muscle cells and adjacent fibroblast cells within lung blood vessels affected by pulmonary arterial hypertension. The study identified distinct disease-related states in each cell type and provided deeper insights into their interactions and communication. While certain conclusions should be interpreted with caution due to inherent methodological limitations, the study's findings remain convincing and robust. This is supported by the use of advanced and complementary techniques, as well as the rare isolation of diseased lung blood vessel cells from the same donor, enabling direct comparison.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. A synthetic method to assay polycystin channel biophysics

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Megan Larmore
   2. Orhi Esarte Palomero
   3. Neha Kamat
   4. Paul G DeCaen

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     The authors have developed a valuable approach that employs cell-free expression to reconstitute ion channels into giant unilamellar vesicles for biophysical characterisation. The work is convincing and will be of particular interest to those studying ion channels that primarily occur in organelles and are therefore not amenable to be studied by more traditional methods.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. RNA tertiary structure and conformational dynamics revealed by BASH MaP

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Maxim Oleynikov
   2. Samie R Jaffrey

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work substantially advances our understanding of RNA structure analysis by introducing an innovative method that extends DMS probing to include guanosine residues, thereby enhancing our ability to detect complex tertiary interactions. The evidence supporting the conclusions is compelling, with detailed analyses demonstrating the method's capacity to differentiate structural contexts and improve RNA structure predictions. This work will be of broad interest to RNA structural biology, biochemistry, and biophysics researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. NK cell exhaustion in Wilson’s disease revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing predicts the prognosis of cholecystitis

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Yong Jin
   2. Jiayu Xing
   3. Chenyu Dai
   4. Lei Jin
   5. Wanying Zhang
   6. Qianqian Tao
   7. Mei Hou
   8. Ziyi Li
   9. Wen Yang
   10. Qiyu Feng
   11. Hongyang Wang
   12. Qingsheng Yu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings, based on solid methods, to link metabolic dysfunction in Wilson's disease to immune cell dysregulation and poor cholecystitis outcomes. The integration of clinical data and single-cell analyses highlights NK cell exhaustion as a key factor, offering insights with potential therapeutic implications. The work will be of interest to colleagues in inflammatory and metabolic diseases.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. PDGFRα signaling regulates Srsf3 transcript binding to affect PI3K signaling and endosomal trafficking

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Thomas E Forman
   2. Marcin P Sajek
   3. Eric D Larson
   4. Neelanjan Mukherjee
   5. Katherine A Fantauzzo

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental work provides new mechanistic insight in regulation of PDGF signaling through splicing controls. The evidence is compelling to demonstrate functional involvement of Srsf3, an RNA binding protein to this new and interesting mechanism. The work will be of broad interest to developmental biologists in general and molecular biologists/biochemists in the field of growth factor signaling and RNA processing.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Elucidating ATP’s role as solubilizer of biomolecular aggregate

    This article has 5 authors:

    1. Susmita Sarkar
    2. Saurabh Gupta
    3. Chiranjit Mahato
    4. Dibyendu Das
    5. Jagannath Mondal

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      The authors combined molecular dynamics simulations and experiments to study the role of ATP as a hydrotrope of protein aggregates. The topic is of major current interest and thus the study potentially makes an important contribution to the community. With the revised version, the level of evidence is considered generally solid, although there remains concern regarding the unusually high ATP concentration used in the simulation.

    Reviewed by eLife