eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Female-dominated disciplines have lower evaluated research quality and funding success rates, for men and women

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Alex James
   2. Franca Buelow
   3. Liam Gibson
   4. Ann Brower

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study provides convincing evidence that the quality of research in female-dominated fields of research is systematically undervalued by the research community. The authors' findings are based on analyses of data from a research assessment exercise in New Zealand and data on funding success rates in Australia, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom. This work is an important contribution to the discourse on gender biases in academia, underlining the pervasive influence of gender on whole fields of research, as well as on individual researchers.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. Anti-diuretic hormone ITP signals via a guanylate cyclase receptor to modulate systemic homeostasis in Drosophila

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jayati Gera
   2. Marishia Agard
   3. Hannah Nave
   4. Farwa Sajadi
   5. Leena Thorat
   6. Shu Kondo
   7. Dick R. Nässel
   8. Jean-Paul V. Paluzzi
   9. Meet Zandawala

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This important study provides a comprehensive analysis of ITP and its role as an anti-diuretic and metabolic hormone in Drosophila. The evidence supporting the conclusion is solid in general with combined genetic, comparative genomic approaches, classical physiological techniques, and biochemical assays. However, the evidence of direct binding between ITPa and Gyc76C and their physiological functions is incomplete. This work represents a contribution to the field of neuropeptides and neurohormones in insects and other animals.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. Identification of nonsense-mediated decay inhibitors that alter the tumor immune landscape

   This article has 17 authors:

   1. Ashley L Cook
   2. Surojit Sur
   3. Laura Dobbyn
   4. Evangeline Watson
   5. Joshua D Cohen
   6. Blair Ptak
   7. Bum Seok Lee
   8. Suman Paul
   9. Emily Hsiue
   10. Maria Popoli
   11. Bert Vogelstein
   12. Nickolas Papadopoulos
   13. Chetan Bettegowda
   14. Kathy Gabrielson
   15. Shibin Zhou
   16. Kenneth W Kinzler
   17. Nicolas Wyhs

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Here, the authors developed a cell-based screening assay for the identification of small molecule inhibitors of nonsense-mediated decay (NMD), and used it to validate KVS0001, a new small molecule SMG1 kinase inhibitor derived from the existing inhibitor SMG1i-11, showing it inhibits NMD in cultured cells leading to expression of neoantigens from NMD-targeted genes and slows tumor growth of cancer cell lines possessing a significant number of out-of-frame indel mutations. The conclusions are supported by convincing evidence, and the significance of this work consists in the development of a new and very promising NMD inhibitor drug that acts as an inhibitor of the SMG1 NMD kinase and is effective in animal tumor studies. This is an important advance for the field, as previous NMD inhibitors were not specific, lacked efficacy, or were very toxic and hence not suitable for animal applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Cardiac neurons expressing a glucagon-like receptor mediate cardiac arrhythmia induced by high-fat diet in Drosophila

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Yunpo Zhao
   2. Jianli Duan
   3. Joyce van de Leemput
   4. Zhe Han

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study reports useful information on the mechanisms by which a high-fat diet induces arrhythmias in the model organism Drosophila. Specifically, the authors propose that adipokinetic hormone (Akh) secretion is increased with this diet, and through binding of Akh to its receptor on cardiac neurons, arrhythmia is induced. The authors have revised their manuscript but the evidence remains incomplete. Nonetheless, the data presented will be helpful to those who wish to extend the research to a more complex model system, such as the mouse.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. The satiety hormone cholecystokinin gates reproduction in fish by controlling gonadotropin secretion

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Lian Hollander-Cohen
   2. Omer Cohen
   3. Miriam Shulman
   4. Tomer Aiznkot
   5. Pierre Fontanaud
   6. Omer Revah
   7. Patrice Mollard
   8. Matan Golan
   9. Berta Levavi-Sivan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents valuable findings on the role of the satiety hormone cholecystokinin typically associated with feeding in the control of a pituitary hormone, FSH, which is a critical regulator of reproductive physiology. The authors provide solid pharmacological evidence that cholecystokinin is sufficient to regulate FSH and compelling genetic evidence that one of its receptors is required for gonadal development, with uncertainties remaining about the physiological regulation and necessity of the peptide. The work will be of interest to reproductive biologists, especially those with an interest in the endocrine control of fertility.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. DIETS: a simple and sensitive assay to measure and control the intake of complex solid foods, like high-fat diets, in Drosophila

   This article has 7 authors:

   1. Manikrao R. Thakare
   2. Prerana Choudhary
   3. Bhavna Pydah
   4. Suhas Sunke
   5. R Sai Prathap Yadav
   6. Pavan Agrawal
   7. Gaurav Das

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment:

     This work describes an easily implemented method for measuring solid food intake in Drosophila, which is necessary for studying the consumption of experimentally challenging diets, such as high-fat foods, as well as their nutritional impacts on the organism. It is a valuable technical contribution with solid evidence supporting the conclusions, filling a significant gap in the field.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Estradiol elicits distinct firing patterns in arcuate nucleus kisspeptin neurons of females through altering ion channel conductances

   This article has 9 authors:

   1. Jian Qiu
   2. Margaritis Voliotis
   3. Martha A Bosch
   4. Xiao Feng Li
   5. Larry S Zweifel
   6. Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova
   7. Kevin T O'Byrne
   8. Oline K Rønnekleiv
   9. Martin J Kelly

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study combined multiple approaches to gain insight into why rising estradiol levels, by influencing hypothalamic neurons, ultimately lead to ovulation. The experimental data were solid, but evidence for the conclusion that the findings explain how estradiol acts in the intact female were incomplete because they lacked experimental conditions that better approximate physiological conditions. Nevertheless the work will be of interest to reproductive biologists working on ovarian biology and female fertility.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Binding of LncDACH1 to dystrophin impairs the membrane trafficking of Nav1.5 protein and increases ventricular arrhythmia susceptibility

   This article has 21 authors:

   1. Genlong Xue
   2. Jiming Yang
   3. Yang Zhang
   4. Ying Yang
   5. Ruixin Zhang
   6. Desheng Li
   7. Tao Tian
   8. Jialiang Li
   9. Xiaofang Zhang
   10. Changzhu Li
   11. Xingda Li
   12. Jiqin Yang
   13. Kewei Shen
   14. Yang Guo
   15. Xuening Liu
   16. Guohui Yang
   17. Lina Xuan
   18. Hongli Shan
   19. Yanjie Lu
   20. Yang Baofeng
   21. Zhenwei Pan

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     This study presents an important contribution to cardiac arrhythmia research by demonstrating long noncoding RNA Dachshund homolog 1 (lncDACH1) tunes sodium channel functional expression and affects cardiac action potential conduction and rhythms. The evidence supporting the major claims are convincing. The work will be of broad interest to cell biologists and cardiac electrophysiologists.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. The evolutionary history of the ancient weevil family Belidae (Coleoptera: Curculionoidea) reveals the marks of Gondwana breakup and major floristic turnovers, including the rise of angiosperms

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Xuankun Li
   2. Adriana E Marvaldi
   3. Rolf G Oberprieler
   4. Dave Clarke
   5. Brian D Farrell
   6. Andrea Sequeira
   7. M Silvia Ferrer
   8. Charles O'Brien
   9. Shayla Salzman
   10. Seunggwan Shin
   11. William Tang
   12. Duane D McKenna

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife assessment

     Through anchored phylogenomic analyses, this important study offers fresh insights into the evolutionary history of the plant diet and geographic distribution of Belidae weevil beetles. Employing robust methodological approaches, the authors propose that certain belid lineages have maintained a continuous association with Araucaria hosts since the Mesozoic era. Although the biogeographical analysis is somewhat limited by uncertainties in vicariance explanations, this convincing study enhances our understanding of Belidae's evolutionary dynamics and provides new perspectives on ancient community ecology.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. Laminar specificity and coverage of viral-mediated gene expression restricted to GABAergic interneurons and their parvalbumin subclass in marmoset primary visual cortex

    This article has 6 authors:

    1. Frederick Federer
    2. Justin Balsor
    3. Alexander Ingold
    4. David P Babcock
    5. Jordane Dimidschstein
    6. Alessandra Angelucci

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife assessment

      Unlocking the potential of molecular genetic tools (optogenetics, chemogenetics, sensors, etc.) for the study of systems neuroscience in nonhuman primates requires the development of effective regulatory elements for cell-type specific expression to facilitate circuit dissection. This study provides a valuable building block, by carefully characterizing the laminar expression profile of two optogenetic enhancers, one designed for general GABA+ergic neurons (h56D) and the second (S5E2) for parvalbumin+ cell-type selective expression in the marmoset primary visual cortex. This study contributes solid evidence to our understanding of these tools but is limited by the understandably small number of animals used.

    Reviewed by eLife