eLife

Latest preprint reviews

1. Age-dependent predictors of effective reinforcement motor learning across childhood

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Nayo M Hill
   2. Haley M Tripp
   3. Daniel M Wolpert
   4. Laura A Malone
   5. Amy J Bastian

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study tests the development of motor reinforcement learning from toddlerhood to adulthood, using a large online sample. They show that learning improves with age in a task that, like real-life movement, involves a continuous range of response options and probabilistic rewards, and link this shift to reduced movement variability and more efficient feedback-based learning through behavioural modeling. Simplifying the task with discrete actions and deterministic outcomes boosted younger children's performance, suggesting early learning is limited by spatial and probabilistic processing. The evidence is convincing, although future work may investigate more naturalistic movement.

   Reviewed by eLife

2. A humoral immune response to parasitoid wasps in Drosophila is regulated by JAK/STAT, NF-κB and GATA

   This article has 5 authors:

   1. Shuyu Olivia Zhou
   2. Jonathan P Day
   3. Bart Deplancke
   4. Alexandre B Leitão
   5. Francis M Jiggins

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable study reports an extensive analysis of the way a humoral immune response to parasitoid wasp is expressed and regulated, building on previous work from the authors on an anti-parasitoid effector lectin. The solid evidence uses two complementary approaches to show which innate immune pathways are involved in the regulation of the anti-parasitoid response. The evidence would be stronger if some analytical and related concerns can be addressed. The work will be of relevance to the community of investigators studying insect immune cells as well as researchers interested in host defense against parasitism.

   Reviewed by eLife

3. TopoMetry systematically learns and evaluates the latent geometry of single-cell data

   This article has 3 authors:

   1. David Sidarta-Oliveira
   2. Ana I Domingos
   3. Licio A Velloso

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important study presents a theoretically grounded framework for dimensionality reduction in single-cell RNA sequencing data, utilizing the principles of Riemannian manifolds. The proposed method addresses a critical challenge in bioinformatics-extracting highly informative latent dimensions without relying on the heuristic assumptions common in existing workflows. The evidence supporting the method's utility in estimating intrinsic dimensionality and identifying cell types is convincing, though the work would benefit from more rigorous validation against established ground truths and a clearer strategy for addressing prevalent batch effects.

   Reviewed by eLife

4. Prebiotic gas flow environment enables isothermal nucleic acid replication

   This article has 4 authors:

   1. Philipp Schwintek
   2. Emre Eren
   3. Christof Bernhard Mast
   4. Dieter Braun

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This important work shows how a simple geophysical setting of gas flow over a narrow channel of water can create a physical environment that leads to the isothermal replication of nucleic acids. The work presents compelling evidence for an isothermal polymerase chain reaction in careful experiments involving evaporation and convective flows, complimented with fluid dynamics simulations. This work will be of interest to scientists working on the origin of life and more broadly, on nucleic acids and diagnostic applications.

   Reviewed by eLife

5. Monoclonal antibodies derived from B cells in subjects with cystic fibrosis reduce Pseudomonas aeruginosa burden in mice

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Malika Hale
   2. Kennidy K Takehara
   3. Christopher D Thouvenel
   4. Dina A Moustafa
   5. Andrea Repele
   6. Mary F Fontana
   7. Jason Netland
   8. Sharon McNamara
   9. Ronald L Gibson
   10. Joanna B Goldberg
   11. David J Rawlings
   12. Marion Pepper

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     Treatment of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) infections is challenging because of intrinsic and acquired antibiotic resistance to most antibiotic drug classes. Therefore, by using donor B cells in subjects with cystic fibrosis who undergo intermittent or chronic airway PA infections, the authors aimed to isolate B-cell receptors against PA virulence factors and examined their biological activities. The data are solid and the protective antibodies identified in this study could be useful for protection against PA.

   Reviewed by eLife

6. Sex-dependent gastrointestinal colonization resistance to MRSA is microbiota and Th17 dependent

   This article has 12 authors:

   1. Alannah Lejeune
   2. Chunyi Zhou
   3. Defne Ercelen
   4. Gregory Putzel
   5. Xiaomin Yao
   6. Alyson R Guy
   7. Miranda Pawline
   8. Magdalena Podkowik
   9. Alejandro Pironti
   10. Victor J Torres
   11. Bo Shopsin
   12. Ken Cadwell

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This fundamental study highlights potential mechanisms underlying the sex-dependent bias in susceptibility to gut colonization by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The evidence supporting the conclusion is compelling. The work will interest biologists who study intestinal infection and immunity.

   Reviewed by eLife

7. Cortico-striatal action control inherent of opponent cognitive-motivational styles

   This article has 2 authors:

   1. Cassandra Avila
   2. Martin Sarter

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This valuable manuscript investigated the role of glutamate signaling in the dorsomedial striatum of rats in a treadmill-based task and reported that it differs in goal-trackers compared to sign-trackers in a way that corresponds to differences in behaviour. The evidence supporting these claims is solid but could be further strengthened by adding more analyses and more detailed descriptions of current analyses. These findings will primarily be of interest to behavioural neuroscientists.

   Reviewed by eLife

8. Elucidating the kinetic and thermodynamic insight into regulation of glycolysis by lactate dehydrogenase and its impact on tricarboxylic acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation in cancer cells

   This article has 8 authors:

   1. Siying Zeng
   2. Yuqi Wang
   3. Minfeng Ying
   4. Chengmeng Jin
   5. Chang Ying
   6. Di Wang
   7. Hao Wu
   8. Xun Hu

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     This study presents an assessment of the effect of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) inhibition on the activity of glycolysis and tricarboxylic acid cycle. The data were collected and analyzed using solid and validated methodology. This paper makes a useful contribution to the field as it considers a control analysis of LDH flux. The findings differ from other published findings likely due to the time course of the incubations used to assess metabolism. While such comparative studies were not presented in the manuscript, the manuscript should be interpreted in light of this critical distinction.

   Reviewed by eLife

9. ATP burst is the dominant driver of antibiotic lethality in Mycobacterium smegmatis

   This article has 6 authors:

   1. Tejan Lodhiya
   2. Aseem Palande
   3. Anjali Veeram
   4. Gerald J Larrouy-Maumus
   5. Dany JV Beste
   6. Raju Mukherjee

   This article has been curated by 1 group:

   • Curated by eLife

     eLife Assessment

     In this important work, Lodhiya et al. provide evidence that excessive ATP underlies the killing of the model organism Mycobacterium smegmatis by two mechanistically-distinct antibiotics. The data are generally solid as the authors deploy multiple, orthogonal readouts and methods for manipulating reactive oxygen species and ATP. The work will be of interest to those studying antibiotic mechanisms of action.

   Reviewed by eLife

10. A new preprocedural predictive risk model for post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis: The SuPER model

    This article has 17 authors:

    1. Mitsuru Sugimoto
    2. Tadayuki Takagi
    3. Tomohiro Suzuki
    4. Hiroshi Shimizu
    5. Goro Shibukawa
    6. Yuki Nakajima
    7. Yutaro Takeda
    8. Yuki Noguchi
    9. Reiko Kobayashi
    10. Hidemichi Imamura
    11. Hiroyuki Asama
    12. Naoki Konno
    13. Yuichi Waragai
    14. Hidenobu Akatsuka
    15. Rei Suzuki
    16. Takuto Hikichi
    17. Hiromasa Ohira

    This article has been curated by 1 group:

    • Curated by eLife

      eLife Assessment

      This valuable study discusses a hot topic in post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis. The new score for predicting post-ERCP pancreatitis offers an idea about the risk of pancreatitis before the procedure. Although most scores depend on intraprocedural manoeuvres, such as the number of attempts to cannulate the papilla, this is a solid retrospective single-center study in one country. To be validated in the future, this score will need to be done in many countries and on large numbers of patients.

    Reviewed by eLife